“How is my beautiful wife today?” he asked every morning when arriving home from his shift. I would be in the spacious kitchen, offering fresh bread and yellow butter, coffee made from the finest beans.
“Never happier,” I always replied. “It is such a joy to be married to a kind man like you.”
Our marriage was new and dripping with honey, and I was content for a while. I enjoyed being a married woman and walking by his side with my gloved hand resting on his arm. I liked to sit next to him in church, liked the way people looked at me, as if I were important. Suddenly I had a voice that was heard because I spoke for him too—a man of some means. I had gotten my stamp of approval and no one could peg me as a poor girl anymore. A man had chosen me above all else and thought me fit to run his household, mend his shirts, and cook his meals. He had given me his name to carry. The girl by the lake, beaten and bleeding, seemed nothing but a dream by then.
I saw to it that the pantry was always well stocked. Now that I had my own money, I just could not seem to stop. I saw the delicious beef and I got it, the link of sausages and the blood pudding too. I could not leave the butcher without it. When I came home, I placed the parcels on the kitchen table and peeled the bloody paper from the ruby red meat. I could not get enough of the scent of it. I had eaten so much porridge in my life, so many scraps and boiled potatoes. The beads of blood were my reward, a prize for being clever, for making my way around it all, the obstacles and the pain. I baked cakes too, so sweet they could barely be eaten. I made waffles, puddings, and tarts for my husband, baked apples, biscuits, and soft, golden buns. As much pleasure as they gave me, though, those sweet little treats, they were nothing compared to the meat, glittering brightly in the kerosene light. Food like my mother never tasted. Food fit for kings and queens. I would not be hungry again, I swore, and stocked my pantry full to the brim: smoked and cured, cut and whole. To me it was all about the meat.
I kept chickens in the backyard as I had promised. I had a pen made but never bought the pig. I told my husband I just could not bear it, to raise an animal and then have it killed. In truth, I had no patience for it then, to raise my own meat when I could buy it. It is hard work, butchering a pig. Mads found me sweet and endearing, patted my hand, and said of course, we did not need it; we had other meat to chew on, soft and supple and ruby red.
At first, it baffled me how easy it was to have things done my way. The men I knew back home were a hard and stubborn breed. They said no just for the pleasure of hearing the word said aloud and enforced their will with fists and harshness. They let you know your place one slap at a time. Mads was nothing like that. He was a simple man in pursuit of a simple life. He wanted a woman to look after him, to fluff his pillows and iron his shirts. I liked this as it made him easy, but I despised him for it too. I never much appreciated kindness. To me it spoke of weakness and I never could stomach that. It made me worry about the future, the kindness in that man. He would have to be ruled, I decided, or he might become our ruin.
“He doesn’t want anything,” I complained to my sister. “He wants nothing for himself but what we have.”
* * *
—
We had been married barely a year when bad news arrived in an envelope with my brother Peder’s handwriting on the front. I had diligently written home ever since I came to America, telling my parents of my good marriage and lovely house, and had received replies in Olina’s sloppy scrawls. I had never written to my brother, though, and never received a letter from him, which was why I knew at once that something was amiss. I stood on the floor in my freshly scoured kitchen and tore open the envelope while preparing myself for the blow that was sure to follow. I quickly scanned the ink on the page: Mother was dead just after Christmas. She had suffered a chest pain that would not go away, and passed on quite suddenly in her bed. Father had not noticed until morning.
“He was drunk for sure,” I told Nellie when she came to see me later that week. Her daughter, Olga, was playing with a deck of cards by the end of the scrubbed kitchen table. “He would have noticed if her heart gave out if he hadn’t been drunk.”
“Even if he had, what good would it have done? Father could never afford a doctor.” Nellie dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “I so wish I could have seen her to the grave, don’t you?”
“I wouldn’t go back even for that,” I told her, truthfully enough, “but I hope he wasn’t drunk at the grave site.”
“Peder would have kept an eye on him.” Nellie was still crying. I was not. I was angry.
“What good did he ever do her? She lived such a miserable life—”
“Don’t you blame this on Father, Bella. He has his weaknesses, but Mother was old and had lived a hard life. It was just her time to go—”
“Did you know he didn’t marry her before she’d lost our first sister—do you remember her talking about that child?”
“Yes, she still lived with her parents when she had her.” Nellie lowered the handkerchief. “She and Father married a month after she died.”
“Why would she do a thing like that?” I poured us more brandy. “She could have gotten away then, when the child was dead. Why would she marry him after that?”
“Oh, people would still talk. That child wasn’t gone just because it was dead.” Nellie sipped from her glass. “Perhaps she loved him once.”
“Young and foolish.” I snorted.
“We should be glad for it,” Nellie saw fit to remind me. “We would not sit here if she hadn’t married him.”
“She settled for nothing at all.”
“But she had us, her children, and that’s something.”
“It’s certainly more than I have.” Mother’s death had left an ache in me: a twinge in my chest like an open wound. A hole in the soil, next to a root.
“You are still young and have years to try.” Nellie bent forth in her chair and helped Olga gather the cards. The girl smiled up at her with Mother’s eyes. I wanted to tell my sister then, about the damage done by the lake, but the words would not come; they slipped and escaped like tadpoles in a pond. Soon they were all gone.
“I can’t stand it anymore,” I said instead, “to see other women with their children. Even the thinnest, meanest woman at church has a brood of her own. People like her for it. They think her children are sweet and keep asking her about them.” I had fretted over my lack of children before, but never had I felt it as keenly as I did after Mother passed away. I kept thinking about that grave in the woods, as if the fresh loss opened the door to the other, and I did not quite know which one I was mourning. Maybe I mourned them both.
I was angry for what had been taken from me.
“People do that,” Nellie said, referring to the congregation. “It’s easy to talk about children.”
“Well, they don’t ask me, because I don’t have any little girls to show off.” I emptied my glass in one swift motion.
* * *
—
It bothered me to see mothers on the sidewalks, leading their young ones by the hand. It bothered me to hear wailing babies through open windows, and see a woman’s hand adjust a young boy’s collar in a carriage passing by. I hated how the little ones looked upon their mothers with love. I came to believe that was all that I wanted; for a child’s eyes to look at me like that. I wanted that love the other women had, that innocent adoration. What had those women ever done to have it delivered to them so effortlessly? What had Nellie ever done to have her belly swell time and again? Why could I not have the same?
On late nights when Mads was at work, I sometimes worried if God saw me after all and was punishing me for that poisoned dram. Then I remembered all the blood after the lake, and the thought that I was broken inside. I did not worry about God then.
The house around me was quiet—so quiet. No child’s sweet breath filled the night. Still, I sometimes thought I c
ould hear the sounds of small feet crossing the floors, or a tinkling laughter in my ear. Ghosts of the children I could have had, if I had not lain down with the farmer’s son. I thought of Anders often in those days, while drowning my sorrows in expensive brandy and rubbing my jaw, which had never truly healed. I wanted to kill him all over again for the damage he had caused me. I felt regret that he was no longer alive. I should have done it slower, prolonged his agony further—or I should have done it more quickly, using my bare hands to extinguish his life. I should have made it bloody and painful: extracting his teeth and molesting his gut, just as he had done to me. I had been too kind to merely slip him rat poison, when what he had done to me had left me forever barren. My hatred simmered but had nowhere to go—the man was already dead, and no power on this earth could undo the damage done.
I raised a glass to the devil in those nights, huddled in my shawl at the kitchen table. I prayed that Anders was with him, facing eternal torment.
Soon I grew tired of the cooking and the housekeeping. Grew tired of making cakes. I grew tired of the church as well—all that exhausting humility. The house, which had seemed such a treasure trove at first, seemed to have lost all luster. The blue-painted walls in the kitchen seemed grimy, as if covered by a fine layer of dust. The wine-colored upholstery of my new chairs seemed tarnished like beef left out too long. Even the lilacs in the backyard seemed to fade before me, drained of both color and scent. No matter how often I swept the floors, debris always found its way in. I was sick of the somber, dark dresses I wore, the plain cross around my neck. I looked for other things to wear in plum-colored satin and emerald wool. I bought myself hats with lush velvet roses and feathers from rare and colorful birds. Things like those I had dreamed of while crossing the sea to this land. Instead of scrubbing out the pantry, I walked around in the city and stopped for expensive hot chocolate and tea.
“You’ll bring us into ruin.” Mads shook his head. He had a folded newspaper in his hand. His white undershirt was clean and neat; the suspenders hung off his shoulders. I was at the table in the parlor, my parcels laid out on the polished wood. I did not answer but looked at him while my fingers worked with lengths of ribbons and folds of soft cotton. “What happened to the kind and simple woman I married?”
“What happened to you?” I looked him in the eyes. “Since when did you talk to your wife in that way? Have I not cooked for you, scrubbed your floors, and aired your slippers? Why would you deny me a few luxuries of my own?”
“Because you don’t need all those dresses. They aren’t even fit for church!” His bottom lip quivered a little under the mustache.
I filled a small glass with pear brandy; my hand barely shook, though the anger was already building inside me. “I need something nice to look at, being burdened with the sight of you every day. Why do you want so little in life, and why does it offend you that I want more?”
He shifted on the floor then, with his gaze cast down, the newspaper crumpled in his hand. “I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment to you.”
“It’s too late for regrets now.” I lifted my glass and downed it. “You should change your aims, though. We ought to live somewhere nicer—bigger.” I looked around at the cramped room, littered with my purchases.
“Why? We have empty rooms as it is.” He looked utterly confused.
“Empty rooms are a sign we have done well in life. God looks after his own.” It ached to say it, as I would rather have them filled with little girls and boys. I could not admit this to him, though. Instead, I lifted my chin and narrowed my gaze, measured him across the short distance.
“Does He now?” Mads replied with something like mirth tugging at the sides of his mouth. “My wallet is nearly empty, Bella—my savings are nearly gone!” He hit the table with the newspaper in a rare display of anger, but I was my father’s daughter and it did not impress me at all.
“You have to make more, then,” I hissed across the table. “You always knew it would cost, having a wife.” If I was to be trapped in this house with this man, at least I would live as I pleased.
He slumped down in a chair. “We are not rich people, Bella. We cannot afford all that.” The newspaper motioned to my parcels. “We cannot have beef every day.”
“What would you want us to eat, then? Salted herring and porridge?” My lips twisted up with disdain. His pitifulness made me furious.
“Something . . . sensible.” He threw out an arm.
“Do you think God would love us better then?” I filled my glass to the brim. “Do you think he’d bestow great riches upon us if we ate more cabbage and beets?” I all but snarled when I turned to face him, so abruptly that my skirts spun around my ankles and liquor spilled down on my hand.
“It’s just slipping away, Bella. All my money, into puddings and vanity.” He shook his head and rubbed his brow.
“You shouldn’t have married, then, if it bothers you so much! Maybe you’re just lazy—too lazy to work to keep a nice house!” My gaze searched the table for something to throw: a book, perhaps, or a cup. A pair of gleaming scissors.
“We’re perhaps not where you want to be in life, but I wish you would wait to spend until we have the means—”
“You eat the beef and savor the cheese, same as I!” I drank fast to quench the fury—to erase it with another sort of fire. The liquor slipped down my throat, sweet and burning, but it did not smother the flames of my rage.
“I wish you would not drink so much.” His voice was meek—it fanned the flames.
“I wish you weren’t such a foolish man.” I could barely whisper the words. I filled my glass again.
“How can you speak so cruelly to me?” His mouth hung open and his eyes went wide.
“I was thinking of buying new china,” I told him. My voice was still hoarse, but it carried. “We can’t be eating off chipped plates.” I wanted to bait him, to see if he would turn into a bear before me: rage, scream, and throw things too. Maybe that would be better than this sad and miserable sheep before me.
“They are not chipped,” he bleated.
“Not yet, but they will be. Cheap plates always break.” I clutched my glass so hard that my fingers ached. My gaze was trained on his neck, on the fat vein pulsing there.
“Who cares what we eat from, Bella?”
No one cared, and that was the truth of it. No one cared what we ate from but me.
* * *
—
As Mads’s savings shrunk, my mood darkened. I kept staring into the pantry, at the sausages and cheeses, the mutton and the beef, and it never seemed to be enough. I bought more all the time, filled that pantry to the brim, but still it seemed so empty to me. Even when I had to throw some out or cut green mold from the cheese, I bought more. Even when it reeked of rot, I kept pushing more food in there. I thought that if I could not fill the empty rooms, at least I could fill that pantry to the brim, but the house always worked against me. It was a bottomless pit for my wants and needs that would never give me satisfaction. All it did was take, and taunt with that empty space—with what I did not have. Soon I would not even have money to spend, and that thought scared me more than anything else.
I would not be poor again, take in wash or mending and feel my hands grow sore from scrubbing other people’s sheets. Never again—no more. I would never feel the ache of hunger and fall asleep with my knuckles buried deep in my belly to stave off pangs of pain.
I would never be hungry again.
I broke into a cold sweat and hives, sitting by the kitchen table, ogling the door to the pantry. Instead of spending less money or cooking less lavishly, I found myself unable to do anything but the opposite. I brought home even more butter, sugar, and cream, even more meat to fill the pantry. I was preparing for winter like a bear, adding fat to my body. It was my shield, that girth of flesh. No harm could ever come to me behind folds of fat and expensive cl
othing. No one could take the food from me if I had already eaten it all. It was mine then for sure.
I deserved that food, those clothes, that china. This was America, land of opportunity and second chances. Who you were before did not matter. So why did those snapping jaws come back to haunt me? Why could I not escape the sensations of poverty and disgrace? It all seemed terribly unfair. I had done everything right: I had married and settled, I had my own house, I went to church and I wiped orphans’ faces. I had made a new life for myself. Yet the husband was weak, the house was wicked, my womb was empty, and the pantry reeked of rot. All I had wanted turned to dust in my hands and it left me so very disappointed.
13.
Nellie
Iam so sorry to bother you, Nellie. I was just—do you have a moment to spare?” Mads Sorensen stood outside my door. His shirt was pristine and his tie neat; his brown coat had gleaming buttons of brass. His face, though, was pale, and his eyes looked pained. A dark blue bruise traveled from the crook of his left eye and nearly to his jaw. I could not help but gasp when I saw it, as I had never thought Mads the sort of man to get into a brawl.
“Come in, please.” I stepped aside and he strode past me, into the messy room where I had been sorting through the laundry when he rapped on the door. Olga was sitting among the heaps of filthy garments, toying with empty thread spools, building herself a castle. Her face lit up when she saw Mads come inside. She had stayed with her aunt and uncle for a few weeks the summer before, after another one of my pregnancies had come to an abrupt and painful end, and had become very fond of them both. The sentiment was in every way mutual, and Mads did not even sit down at the table before he pulled a small doll from the pocket of his coat, made from soft rags and yarn, and offered it to the girl.
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