In the Garden of Spite

by Camilla Bruce

“You know what he’s like.” Mother sat back down as well. The handle had come off the grinder and she tried to put it back on. “Pay him no mind.”

  “I won’t have another word about that night.”

  Another look from Mother then. “Well, there isn’t much more to say, is there? You are still here and the boy is dead.”

  “Strange, that,” Father muttered while shoving the stick deep into the fire, “how he is dead and you are still here.”

  “It means there’s still some justice in this world.” Mother’s hands forced the grinder apart and coffee grains littered the table.

  “I’ll seek service at Rødde in the new year.” My voice was steady again. “I meant to tell you a while ago.”

  Mother looked up, surprised. “I thought you didn’t want to go.”

  “I changed my mind.” I rubbed my tender jaw.

  “Are they still giving you a hard time, down at the farm?”

  “Not at all, but it’s become such a dreary place since he died.”

  “No reason for you to stay on, then, is it?” Father again. “Now that he’s gone.”

  “Be quiet!” Mother barked across the room.

  “I can speak in my own house!”

  “This is barely a house!”

  “What is in your tin, Little Brynhild?” Olina wanted to change the subject. She did not like them arguing and hoped that my surprise would cool their tempers.

  “Lefse,” I said, “from the farm, with regards.”

  “How nice of them.” Mother’s face twisted up with spite. “Nice to know they have enough to spare.”

  “Don’t you start with that again.” Father spat on the floor.

  I opened the tin and set it on the table. Their fingers were like talons, sinking into the soft bread. Olina closed her eyes when she licked the sugar from her fingers. I ate a piece of my own and savored the sweetness of it. To have this every day, I thought, and never want for anything . . . I looked at my mother and thought her a fool for having settled for so little.

  After we ate, I read new letters from my sisters aloud. Nellie wrote that she would be pleased to welcome me in Chicago, and was sorry to hear there had been trouble.

  “How does she know?” asked Mother.

  “People talk,” I said.

  When we set to answer, I added another few lines to Nellie. Little Brynhild is still having a hard time, I wrote. Any little amount will help, so she can join you in America and leave this all behind.

  6.

  The Atlantic Ocean, 1881

  Idid not enjoy the sea. My family caught fish in mountain lakes and creeks, and I was not used to salt water. My body did not agree with the dancing motions of the waves and revolted. I vomited into the sawdust on deck, and then I went back inside and ate the dry crackers and drank the poor tea they served to the passengers in steerage. I held my chin high despite the sickness. I knew it would not last. I knew there was nothing to do but endure—and that every hour that passed was an hour closer to freedom. Nevertheless, I was sick all the way from Trondhjem to Hull, and barely recovered on the train to Liverpool, where we boarded the steam liner to New York.

  I had embarked on the Tasso in Trondhjem with Sigrid, another young woman traveling alone who wanted a companion for security and comfort. Her aunt knew Nellie in Chicago and the two of them had made the connection between us. I did not like her much. Sigrid was as pretty and cheerful as could be, could cook and clean but barely read. She helped me when I was sick, though: made sure my trunk was not lost in England and wiped my slick brow with a cloth.

  The steam liner was a crowded, noisy place. I had never experienced anything like it: the roaring sound of the engine, the scent of oil, the sight of water foaming off the hull. The reek of so many people stacked in bunk beds along the walls. Water was scarce in steerage, and we did not get to wash much. People lived and slept in their clothes. We did not remove our shoes at night, as there was no trust between us. Some passengers had brought their own food supplies with them, scared by letters from relatives who had already made the journey and suffered. The Norwegian stretch of the compartment smelled strongly of salted herring and infants’ filthy bottoms.

  At night, the Scandinavians gathered around a table bolted to the floor. The women in worn headscarves knitted socks and dreamed aloud about acres of land and herds of cattle. They sent sideways glances to the neighboring tables where noisy Irish and Germans laughed and spoke in garbled tongues. Farther down the room, some men played cards from the sounds of it. Sometimes they played the fiddle too.

  They danced some nights, in filthy sawdust on the deck. Young girls laughed, old men leered. Empty bottles were thrown in the sea. Sigrid danced too, encircled by the arms of some handsome Swede or Dane. I did not. I sat with the elderly women, hands folded in my lap. I did not want to be a part of the swirl of life around me. I did not want to make friends. Whatever could my fellow passengers offer but more stories of failure and hunger? I could see the desperation that had sent them running hiding behind their smiles. Their hardships were carved on their faces in deep furrows and lines. I knew enough about poverty and strife already—I was there to forget all about it. Still I woke up at night pressing my fists to the soft of my belly, just as I did as a child when falling asleep without food. Maybe it was the reek of them, all those bodies stacked in the beds. Maybe it reminded me of home, of dark winter nights with nothing in the pot. My mother’s silent anger when she had to pull on her shawl and walk down to the valley to beg for scraps, again. My father’s muttered curses, his endless complaints about this man or that who owed him something or offended him somehow. It took nothing then, to have that fury in him flare to life and leave bruises in its wake.

  That ship reminded me of hunger.

  Four years I worked hard to make it happen; saved everything I could and kept the money with me always. Nellie sent me money too: foreign bills enclosed in letters. When I rose before dawn at Rødde farm to milk and cook and clean, it was all that I could think of, how the drops of sweat on my brow would become coins and bills to help pay my way across the sea. Every spiteful word I took, every humiliation, was a part of the price I had to pay.

  Sigrid had no such concerns. Her ticket had landed in her lap, prepaid. Her aunt had done well in America, it would seem.

  “She has so many children,” she told me one day while we were sitting on deck. She was mending a shawl while I was fighting another bout of sickness. “She needs someone to look after the younger ones.”

  “Her husband must be rich,” I muttered, head bent, breath labored. We were so far out at sea by then there was not a bird in sight; the sea around us rippled like silver in the sunlight. I could not look at it much as it made me feel worse.

  “Not really”—Sigrid’s needle paused in midair—“but he might be one day, my aunt says.”

  “Is he a tailor too?” Many Norwegian men left their pitchforks for pretty seams in Chicago. Back home they would have been laughed at, but not so over there.

  “No, he works at a brewery.” The needle descended into the red cloth. I wished I could have a shawl like that, fine-spun and bold in color.

  “Men can be all sorts of things in America, it seems.”

  “My brother left last year. He never wanted to farm, so it was a good thing for him.”

  “Not much land to farm, either, even if he had stayed.”

  Sigrid put her sewing down in her lap. “What about you, Brynhild? What will you do in Chicago? Help your sister out or seek service?”

  “I am done with service.” I spat bile down in the sawdust. “I want to have a household of my own.”

  She smiled. “You want to get married, then?”

  “Don’t we all?”

  “I suppose.” She went back to the sewing, her dark lashes fanned out on her creamy skin. “Do you want children, Brynhild?”
>
  “If I can.” I spoke before thinking. Had I not been so sick, I would have flushed from the slip. I put my hand to my jaw where he had hit me. It ached under my fingers.

  “It’s not so hard, I’ve heard.” The silly goose giggled beside me. “You just have to make sure to get married first or else you’ll be in a lot of trouble.”

  “That, at least, is the same everywhere.”

  She gave me a puzzled look then; she truly was not bright. She fumbled with her needle and went back to the mending at hand. “Where did you serve before leaving?” She bent her head so all I could see was the white-gray top of her headscarf.

  “Rødde.”

  “Was it nice?”

  “As good as any place, I suppose.” It was hard work and little rest. Not far enough from Selbu that they had not heard. They were already whispering when I arrived, not just about the child and the lake, but about me too. They thought me strange and easy to anger, a little bit touched—veins laced with bad blood. That is what they said.

  “Will you miss it?” Sigrid cut the thread with her teeth.

  “Not at all.” I had left it behind.

  “Have you thought of a name yet?” Sigrid changed the subject. I had told her when we first boarded that I wanted to change my name, as my sister had done, and she had not let up asking since, hoping, perhaps, that she could have one I discarded. She did not have it in her to come up with anything on her own.

  This time I nodded. “Bella,” I said.

  “Bella? Oh, that’s pretty.” She smiled.

  “It is,” I agreed. “Nellie said I had to pick one that could be said as easily in Norwegian as in English, and I decided on Bella even before we left Hull.”

  “Did you?” Her eyes went wide with wonder.

  “I did. It’s after the queen Isabella.” I had learned about her in school.

  “Who?” She did not know, of course.

  “A Spanish queen,” I told her patiently. “She conquered the new world alongside her husband.”

  “Is that what you will do too?” The silly smile was back on her face.

  “I aim to,” I said, as in jest.

  * * *

  —

  In the bunk bed next to me in steerage, Anna, a young Norwegian woman from Telemark, slept with her small daughter. The child, Mari, was quick and lithe and had a head full of golden curls. I sometimes played with her and made her balls of yarn.

  “You will be a good mother one day,” Anna said to me as I was sitting on my bed offering Mari a gray ball. Anna’s face was red and flaking, her matted hair twisted in a bun. “I’m sure you will find a nice Norwegian man in Chicago. There are more men than women there now, so it’ll be easy to find a good match.” She picked up her headscarf from the mattress and tied it at the back of her neck.

  “Leave her be, Anna,” her sister, Martha, said. She shook out a pillow and smoothed the blanket on her bed. “Maybe the girl doesn’t want to marry.”

  “Of course she does. Why else would she travel so far? She wants to settle better than she could back home. She is clever, you see; she won’t be happy with some poor man.”

  “Even poor men are richer in America, I hear,” I agreed. “They say you can make your own fortune there. That it doesn’t matter if your father was a tenant or a lord.”

  Anna nodded vigorously. “You can be your own man—”

  “You still have to know the tools of your trade,” Martha cut in. “Hard work is necessary, even there.”

  “I’m not afraid of work,” I told her, “and neither will my husband be. I have no patience with laziness.”

  “Then I’m sure you’re going to prosper,” said Anna. “America was made for people like you.” She went on to tell me that they planned to settle and farm. They had humble dreams, shared by many, but I was not one of their lot.

  “I’m going to my sister in Chicago.” I tossed another ball of yarn to Mari on the floor; the girl laughed and tried to catch it. “She is much older than me and has been there for years. She lives with her husband in an apartment where she takes in wash and does some mending. I’ll start there, helping her, but I won’t stay for long.”

  “Just until you find a husband.” Anna laughed and lifted Mari into her lap.

  “Just that,” I agreed, although I feared it would not be that easy. I was a plain woman, tall and broad. Suitable for a farmer who needed someone strong—but not for the sort of man that I wanted. A sudden thought of Anders then, his face slack in death. He would have married me in America, I was sure of it. Nothing would have stood between us then. Pity for him that did not happen. Pity for him he was dead.

  “I’m not sorry to leave the old country,” Anna said, “but I am sorry to leave Mother behind. She will be lonely now, with both her daughters gone.”

  “It’s the way it has to be,” Martha said behind her.

  “Father too,” Anna continued. “His eyes have been failing him of late. I wonder how they’ll do without us.”

  “They’ll manage.” Martha again.

  “What about you, Brynhild? Will you miss your mother and father?”

  “Of course.” I looked down in my lap, busied my fingers with pieces of yarn. “Mother cried when I left.” That was true, but she would change her mind soon enough when my letters started to arrive, telling her of my good fortune. “Father gave me his Bible and wished me luck.” This was a lie. “They only want us to be happy in the end. They know there’s nothing for us back home.”

  “It’s a shame.” Anna shook her head and clutched her daughter to her chest.

  Martha spoke up. “It’s not true what they say, that you should bend your neck and make do with what the Lord has granted. The Lord provides opportunities too.”

  “Mother says America is an ungodly land.” Anna smirked and her eyebrow rose in a telling manner. They had been quarreling with their parents too, then, about this trip across the sea.

  “They had no means to escape when they were young. It makes sense that they would think like that.” It was lazy of them, though, not to fight for something better.

  “Anything to get them through the day.” Anna sighed.

  “They should welcome it, the chance we got.” Martha shook her head.

  “They don’t believe that fortune can be a friend,” I said. Little Mari smiled at me, clutching her new ball. “It’s dangerous to believe in luck when you have none.”

  “And you, Brynhild, do you believe in luck?” Anna’s eyes shone in the dim light.

  “I believe that luck can be made.”

  * * *

  —

  After ten days at sea we poured off the ship in New York as a river of rats with matted coats and quivering whiskers. Our lungs expanded, breathing in America; our bellies groaned with hunger, but not for food, no. We washed from the docks and into the city, haggard-faced and reeking of brine, tails whipping as we scurried down the streets, hauling our heavy trunks along. We would devour it all—yes, we would—have our share of fortune’s blessings delivered on our plates.

  I stood on the pier, in the midst of the churn of bodies, waiting for Sigrid to join me. I looked up at the sky then, pale and clear, and wondered just how far how far I would get, how high I would climb toward that sky.

  This was the land where I would thrive.

  7.

  Nellie

  Chicago, 1881

  The day before Little Brynhild arrived, my friend Clara, and Laura, who was new in the building, helped me with the laundry so I would not have to fret about it on my sister’s first day in Chicago.

  My small apartment was hot and steamy; several zinc tubs littered the floor between the table and the stove, intercepted by heaps of sorted laundry. We had heated water, filled the tubs, drizzled in soda crystals, and were at it on our knees, with plungers and scrubbers. O
ur skirts and aprons were soon soaked through, and all children banished to Clara’s apartment, where her oldest daughter looked after them all.

  It was filthy work, as most of those who left their laundry with me were unmarried Norwegian men who lived in cramped quarters. Some of them had landladies who offered to take in wash, but they found that their clothes were as grimy as before upon their return. Others lived in such squalor that no service was available, and so they brought it to me: shirts stained with tobacco and liquor, pants covered in dust and flecked with gravy, undershirts so ripe that the scent lingered in the air long after the garments were washed and hung, and underthings reeking of urine.

  It was good money, though, and I could not afford to say no. We had sent many envelopes across the ocean since the first time we heard of Little Brynhild’s distress, and though we did not feel it keenly, it had meant that I sometimes had to choose the poorer meat, and that the house of our own that we dreamed of for so long had to wait just a little while longer. I never thought of it as a kindness, however, but more of a thing that had to be done. Little Brynhild could not stay in Norway, it was as simple as that—and I had to do what I could to make sure that she escaped. The way Clara talked about it, though, you would think I were a saint.

  “No one ever helped me,” she said as her strong hands curved around the plunger and set to churn the water. “We are three sisters who made it across, and we all paid for our own fare.” She blew a stray black curl away from her forehead. She had stopped wearing her headscarf when she moved to Chicago, which seemed to me highly impractical. I sometimes found long hairs in the food when she served me a slice of bread or a bowl of soup. It did not help that she pinned it up; the hairs got loose anyway.

  “We got a little help,” said Laura. She was a tall, fair woman from the north of Norway, so skinny that her pregnant belly seemed awkward on her lanky frame, like a sudden hill on a smooth plain. Nothing like mine: a curve resting upon my hips, gently rounded and snug. I loved that belly, and could not help but touch it as often as I was able. At night, when my husband and son were asleep, I would pull up my nightgown and let my hands follow the rise and dip while I closed my eyes and wondered what was inside. It had been such a long time since one of my pregnancies had lasted enough to show. They had too often ended in aches and blood. This time, though—this time it was different.