I was careful not to hope for too much, however. Twice I had carried to term, only to find that the child was weak and did not live. First, it was a girl, the year before Rudolph. Second, it had been a boy, the year that Rudolph was two. The same year I was first made aware of Little Brynhild’s plight.
I remembered how the thought had taken root in me then, that if I only had a little help—even if just for a while—perhaps my body would be stronger, and the children that grew in me too. If I only had another pair of hands to help me out, I could rest more and the babies would thrive. There had been several disappointments since then, and I often forgot about this hope that had hatched after the first letter of distress—it was not why I wanted to bring my sister over, but as the day of her arrival drew nearer, that butterfly of hope came fluttering back again. Perhaps it would be easier this time, because I would not be alone with it all.
“Little Brynhild has paid her share,” I said aloud, even if Clara already knew that. She only said such things because she felt it was wrong for John and me to spend so much on my sister’s fare when we needed comforts of our own. “Who helped you?” I asked Laura, mostly to have her talking. She had just moved in on the ground floor with her husband and two daughters, and we did not know much about her yet.
“My brother,” she replied from her kneeling position. Her hands, buried deep in the tub before her on the floor, stopped moving and the scrubber rose to the surface, drifting between oily sheets of grime. “Ulrik’s sister helped too. Both of them have been here for years. Bertha, Ulrik’s sister, keeps a store—can you believe it? She sells ribbons, buttons, and such to wealthy ladies, and that would certainly never have happened at home. She is the daughter of a tenant, same as us . . . Bertha has offered for us to stay with her as well, but I don’t know.” She lifted an arm to wipe it across her damp brow, leaving a streak of filth, which traveled from her skin and onto the graying headscarf. “She drinks tea from china now, while we just have the tin. My daughters aren’t well-behaved enough in her eyes.”
Clara nodded with a knowing expression, still working the plunger in another tub; her face had become flushed from the churning, but only a little. She was as used to hard work as I was. “It happens sometimes over here, when a person comes to money. They quickly forget where they came from and put on all sorts of airs.” She snorted her disapproval.
“Well, they did come here to escape all that was wrong before,” I said as I stood by the stove, waiting for another batch of water to heat up enough to use. It was the last we had brought in, and soon we would have to brave the stairs again, up and down between the yard and the third floor, carrying heavy buckets from the pump. I was not looking forward to it, and figured Laura was not either; she was about as far along as me.
“That is no reason to look down at honest people,” said Clara.
“Maybe they’re afraid that if they are too friendly, people will ask them for money,” I suggested. “That could certainly happen.” I knew well how desperation could make people become unpleasant. I only had to look to my own kin back at Størsetgjerdet.
“I don’t see why you would defend them.” Clara rarely defended anyone at all but seemed to find flaws even among the righteous. “Shit will be shit,” she said, “no matter how much you scrub it.”
“So if you and Olaf come to money and move into a fine home, you would still be shit?” I could not help but tease her.
“Sure.” She paused the churning and tossed her head. “I am not ashamed of where I come from; the smell of goat will stay with me till the day I die, even if I go to the grave dressed in silk.”
“Maybe it would feel different if you had the silk,” I said.
“Bertha has surely forgotten all about the goats,” said Laura. “She has covered up the stench with real perfume, I reckon.”
“It’s a gamble, that’s for sure,” I mused while pouring the water into a tub for rinsing. “Some of us do better over here while others do not, and it seems as if luck strikes at random. Brothers can be kings and paupers alike. You are lucky,” I said to Laura, “to have family who can help. It is easier then, if you have a place to start.”
“Your sister is lucky too, then,” said Laura. “She will have you to help her.”
“As if Nellie hasn’t done enough,” Clara muttered with her eyes on the churning water before her.
“Little Brynhild has worked hard at Rødde for years, and with everyone whispering about her. Now is her time to cross the ocean, and she has certainly earned her fare.”
“What are they whispering about?” Clara lifted her gaze to meet mine.
I shrugged again. “Who knows . . . I only know that it’s something. My family isn’t thought highly of, and words travel fast, even outside the valley.”
“People can be cruel.” Laura gave a sympathetic nod, as the scrubber dropped from her hand again—she was not a very fast worker.
“It has been years since that attack,” said Clara; “maybe she would have been fine back home.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “but maybe not.”
One more night, I thought. One more night and the worry that had lodged in the pit of my stomach would dissolve and be gone forever.
* * *
—
The train station was crowded and loud. All sorts of people were milling about in the domed entrance hall, some of them carrying large trunks or cases. A woman in a coat lined with fox fur and a hat that carried an assortment of floral bounty brushed shoulders with a crooked old woman with a thousand lines in her face. The latter shuffled toward the tracks with her head bent, her hair hidden by a knitted headscarf and a tattered shawl draped across her shoulders. A man in an expensive-looking suit sat on a bench reading a newspaper, next to a dark-haired family in simple garb who spoke among them what I believed to be Russian. Conductors and other officials rushed past in dark uniforms adorned with shiny buttons, neatly trimmed mustaches, and expressions that stated they were busy with important things—running late, perhaps. Young men sat behind wooden counters, along the tall walls of pale, polished stone and served the winding lines of travelers, counting coins and dispersing tickets.
Above them all, a clock in brass casing mounted on the wall told the time with ornate black arms. The smallest one, spindly and delicate, shivered a little every time it moved, counting down another second.
I could not see my sister yet, and the crowd was much too dense for me. I clung to John’s arm as he pulled me along through the throng. I did not used to be so unsettled by masses, but something had changed in me over the years. Perhaps it was married life that had made me such a sheltered thing. It protected me, yes, but hid me too, away from the noise and the churn of bodies that moved at all times on the city streets. After John had put a little gold on my finger, I no longer had to be a part of it all. I still worked as before but from the safety of my home. I rarely saw people outside our own little circle and barely met a soul that was not born in Norway such as myself. I found that it suited me, but it also made me weak. When faced with the train station’s clamor, expressed in a myriad of tongues, my heart beat faster and my skin turned slick. My mouth suddenly felt too dry to speak.
“How are you feeling?” John asked me, knowing very well of my weakness. “You’re not faint, are you?”
I shook my head, though I did feel a little dizzy. I did not want him to worry about me, though. “It is just the air,” I said. “It’s too hot, and the smell is bad.”
John laughed in his quiet way. “Not everyone who travels takes a bath before they board.”
I smiled a little too; it was true what he said. Of all the scents that mingled in the entrance hall, the one of sweaty, unwashed skin stood out, closely followed by a cloying reek of soot. When I looked down, I could tell that the slick, white floors were grimy with black and spattered with a mixture of tobacco and saliva. I took care to lift my skir
t a little higher.
“I know where her train came in,” John said, having scanned a board on a wall beside one of the ticket stalls. A woman stood beside it, selling small bouquets of flowers from a tub. Lilacs mostly, and large, lush roses, finished off with bright blue bows. I wondered for a second if I should get some for Little Brynhild, but then I thought better of it. I did not truly have money to spend. I worried that we would not find her at the track, that she had gone in search of us and gotten lost—or even worse: that she had not been able to find the station in New York. That she had been robbed or otherwise prevented from boarding the train. It was a harsh world, and she had seen so very little of it.
The worry increased, grasped and held my heart, as we moved farther down the platform, stepping over discarded tickets, cigar butts, and sugar-stained paper bags, and did not see Little Brynhild anywhere. We passed by several tall columns where people with travel-weary faces crowded with their trunks; there was also a newspaper seller and a stooped old man who sold sticks of caramel, but I could not see my sister.
A sudden fear struck me: What if she had changed so much that I would not know her? What if the child I knew was completely erased from her features?
Just then, I caught sight of them: two young women standing by one of the thick columns with two worn leather trunks between them. I knew her at once, of course I did, but it still took me a second to reconcile the girl she had been with the woman she was and make them one person in my mind. She was tall—taller than I was. Her dark brown hair was pulled back from her brow and into a knot at the back of her head. She wore no headscarf. Her nose had grown a little bony, like mine, and her cheekbones rode high, like our father’s. She wore a dark blue coat, which I knew she had bought especially for the journey. She had written about it in her last letter. It was too expensive, but she could not resist treating herself to something new, have a little slice of what was to come: a new beginning—a fresh start, far away from ridicule and strife.
She had not seen us yet but was speaking to the woman before her; lithe and blond, it had to be Sigrid. The latter did not reply to whatever was being said but seemed to hang on to Little Brynhild’s every word, her lips slightly parted as in wonderment.
I was not able to hold back anymore. “Little Brynhild!” I called for her and let go of my husband’s arm to run toward her the best that I could. “Little Brynhild!” I was not worried about the crowd anymore but lifted my hand in a wave as I ran. My cheeks were already aching from smiling; the relief burst like a bubble in my chest, mingling with the joy of her arrival.
She looked up when she heard her name and scanned the crowd with a narrowed gaze, as if squinting against the sun. She looked a little tired, as everyone did after the journey, with dark shadows under her eyes and skin an unhealthy, grayish pallor. She smiled when she saw me; her lips split and lifted, but she did not come toward me. She just stood there with her hands clasped on her belly and watched me arrive.
“I am so happy you are here.” I felt tears coming on when I threw my arms around her neck and felt her cool cheek press against my own. “Finally,” I muttered. “Finally!”
She embraced me in turn and patted my back. She had to bend down a little, as she was so tall. “Yes,” she said when she parted. “Here I am at last.” She sounded calmer than expected, more composed. “I am so happy to be here,” she said, as she took my hand and squeezed it gently with callused fingers. She did not look so happy, though; her dark blue eyes did not twinkle with delight but seemed almost cold when she looked at me.
She was probably just tired—who could blame her?
Then her gaze slid away, just as when she was a child. She could never look another in the eye for very long.
“Let’s get you home,” I whispered in a voice thick with feelings, just as John arrived and reached out his hand to greet his sister-in-law for the very first time. “Meet my little sister,” I said to him with pride. “John, this is Little Brynhild.”
“Bella,” she corrected me. “My name is Bella now.”
8.
Bella
Ihad expected Chicago to be different, and told Nellie so, sitting in her apartment mending rough-woven work clothes with tiny needles. “It reminds me of home.” It should not have done so; there was nothing there that looked like Størsetgjerdet. The tenement building was three stories high, and the single window looked out on clotheslines, brick, and sky. Inside, it was cramped but far prettier than home, with a high ceiling and papered walls, and a proper stove for cooking. John and Nellie even had a bedroom, albeit a small one, with an additional window that looked out on the backyard, a cramped space crowded with outhouses and sheds where dirty children ran wild. The women in the building met on the landings of the stairs that climbed the outside of the wall, peeling vegetables, mending or folding clothes while they chatted and called out to their children down there: blond girls in tattered skirts and ungainly young boys in caps and suspenders wearing nothing at all on their feet. Still, it reminded me of home somehow—perhaps it was the stench of poverty itself.
“It’s nothing like home.” Nellie pursed her lips and squinted at her needle. “I am married now, I have a new child on the way, and we keep this apartment. It’s more than I would’ve had at home, where no one wanted to marry a poor girl with far too many bruises. This place has been good to me. I mend clothes now instead of shoveling muck—”
“But you don’t even speak the language, Nellie. How do you manage?”
“I have no need for it. John does all the talking with strangers. I only see Norwegians and Danes around here anyway, and they understand me just fine.”
“I would still like to learn, though.”
She shrugged in the chair opposite mine, stretching out her legs on the floor. She had a rug there, woven in shades of gray and blue. She also had crocheted white curtains in the windows and fringed edgings on the open shelves that were crammed with colorful boxes and mismatched pieces of china. The room smelled of old food and smoke, but the table between us shone from vigorous polishing and an oil lamp in the ceiling glimmered with brass. I could see how she thought she had done well.
“You always did like to learn.” Nellie gave me a thin smile. “You always had to know it all. Just don’t get too clever. No one wants to marry you then.”
“How come?” I asked, to tease her. I already knew why that was.
“No man wants to be challenged by his wife.” Her gaze, so much like my own, met mine. It was almost the only similarity between us. Nellie was tall as well but scrawny like Mother; hardships had drawn lines in her face. She was thirteen years older than I was, and looked like it could have been more. She had married late and this child was her fourth, but only one had lived past the age of two and was now a lively boy of seven. “You already know what you ought to know.” She pointed at me with the needle. “Cooking, mending, cleaning, farming—”
“I didn’t come here to be a farmer’s wife.” I pursed my lips and threw out my arms. My fingers still clutched the needle, and the red thread went taut between my hand and the garment, humming in the air like a thin cut.
“I know that.” Her voice became a little softer. “I just don’t want you to hope for things you cannot have. Even here, a young woman can only achieve so much.”
“I just don’t want to settle for less than I can get.”
She shook her head and sighed, looking much like our mother in that moment with the plaid headscarf hiding her hair from view. “Mother always said that teacher filled your head with nonsense.”
“No need to blame him. My thoughts are all my own.” I took the heavy scissors from the table and cut the spindly thread. Down on the floor, we had sheets soaking in tubs and later we would be at them with the plungers. Then we would carry more water upstairs and start preparing John’s dinner. My hands were never idle in Chicago.
“I worry sometimes, Bell
a.” Nellie used the name I had chosen, and the sound of it sent a soft tingle down my back. “You never seem to be satisfied. Not even when your belly is full and you have a bed all to yourself.”
“I could have ten beds to myself, and a girl to cook my meals, if I had the money.”
“Why would you want that? Isn’t one bed enough?”
“What would I do if I lost that one bed? I wouldn’t have a bed at all, then.”
“One bed all to yourself is more than you had at home.”
“But we’re not there anymore, and this place is supposed to be different.”
Nellie glanced up at me over her sewing. “When you meet a man it’ll be fine, I’m sure. You can stomach more than you think with a husband by your side.”
I shrugged and looked at her sore, red hands, “If I had a little more than just enough, I wouldn’t have to worry at all.”
“Keep your fingers crossed for a man of means, then.”
“And in need of a wife to steer him right.” I added a smile to my statement.
Nellie chuckled. “Poor man.” She put the shirt down in her lap and stretched her arms.
“Why settle for less?” I murmured with my head bent over the work, hiding my face from her view.
“Just don’t hope for too much.”
Nellie had been foolish to marry John Larson. I thought she could have made a better choice. Nellie herself spoke of him as if he were a blessing, and I despised her a little for that. She was wrong about what she said, that he would not have had her in Norway. She could have married just as well back home, had she only been a little clever about it. There was no need to go to Chicago to have a man like John Larson. Then again, she said she cared for him, but I thought she could have cared for someone else just as well.
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