I was Bella Gunness now. Bella Sorensen was just as dead as poor, wretched Brynhild Størset.
* * *
—
The first time I saw Peter practice his skills, I knew I had done right in marrying him. He had taken a lamp and a bottle of whiskey to the barn when he went outside to butcher a hog. By the time I entered, the animal lay on the bench, its blood in a bucket, its hide scalded and ready for the knife. Peter had taken his shirt off; his white undershirt clung to his skin and sweat slicked his forehead. While I watched, he made incisions, quickly like a surgeon, using a steady hand. From time to time, he would pause to take another swig of the bottle he had left on the hay-strewn floor. The kerosene light painted him golden; the cleaver sank into the rough skin and made red ribbons in the flesh. I gathered the shawl around me and leaned against the wall, where I could hear the other pigs through the wood: soft squeals and shuffling, as well as the occasional grunt. That was our future in there.
“You don’t have to be here, Bella. You can leave if you dislike the sight.” Peter gave me a concerned look.
“I don’t mind at all, I enjoy it . . . I helped with the butchering when I was a child; I told you so before.”
He paused to smile at me. “I thought you said that to seem bolder than you are.”
“I would think most women are accustomed to blood.”
“Some of them don’t like to see too much of it.”
“How do they make blood pudding, then?”
He laughed and hacked with the cleaver. In his other hand was the knife. “Even if they handle the blood, they might not like to see the animal.”
“False sentiments, I think, said only to make them seem fragile and weak.” All women bleed and that is the truth of it. We slice, cut meat, and clean festering wounds. Sometimes we bleed out from childbirth or violence.
“You’re not so fragile, though.” Peter’s lips twitched.
“No, husband. I’m not.”
“Let me see then.” He reached out and handed the knife to me, hilt first.
“Do you want me to cut?”
“If you think you can.” Peter was still smiling. I stepped forth and took the knife from him. The scent of blood and muck was stronger in front of the animal. Behind me, I could feel Peter’s heat coming off his body. I felt a shiver when I let the knife sink in to finish his stroke, unleashing a fresh wave of coppery scent.
Peter’s arms embraced me from behind; his fingers closed over mine that held the knife. “I’ll show you how it’s best done.” I let him guide my hand to slice and cut the pig apart into glistening flesh and tendons, hard muscles and firm fat. I realized then that I knew nothing at all. The butchering I had partaken in before had been poor handiwork at best. My new husband, though, he had the skills. He even let me use the cleaver. “If we are to make money from these pigs, it doesn’t hurt if you can swing that too.”
He was a very clever man, Peter Gunness.
When we were done with the butchering, sweaty and bloodied, we lay down in the hay like drunken youngsters. Our hands were everywhere, tugging at fabrics and grazing warm skin. I savored the feel of his hands on my flesh: callused from work and flecked with red. He tasted of salt and liquor, that man, and his passion was anything but gentle and kind. When he came undone inside me, he did so with a ragged moan. I loved that sound; it sent shivers down my spine and let me come undone myself.
“Next time I want to kill the animal.” I plucked hay from my hair and brushed dust off my skirts.
He laughed, brushed his hand through his hair, and came away with a few wizened pieces of straw. “Not to worry, I will teach you all there is to know.”
I wondered if the act of butchering excited him some, or if he had done it so many times, it meant nothing at all. If it was only me, his new wife, who made him so inclined to tumble in the hay. I did not mind much either way, but I thought it took some bloodlust to be as skilled a butcher as him.
As we closed the barn doors and went inside, where my Jennie was watching the baby, I thought of what a treasure this man was, who could teach me something useful and new.
* * *
—
I had all I wanted then: a man I had chosen for his kindness and skills, and five young girls who called me Mama. I had the house and the land, a barn filled with seeds, and plenty of healthy livestock. My pantry was bottomless, crammed with milk and butter, eggs, preservatives, and fine cured ham. Even the scrawny cat grew fat with cream.
I had done well for a poor girl from Norway.
All week long, we worked hard to get the farm running. We planned and hired men to work, and sought avenues for our produce. We went to church on Sundays and met with all our neighbors. They were humble people, farmers like us. Honest people, living off the land. It was just what I had wanted: a healthy, wholesome life.
I began gathering the children in my bed before they went to sleep, as a way of coming together after the busy days on the farm—much as my own mother had done when I was a child, out on the stone step at Størsetgjerdet. Sometimes I slipped the girls a treat, we played a game, or I told them stories. Sometimes we just rested together: Myrtle and Lucy with their heads on my shoulders, Jennie and Swanhild with their arms around the younger girls. By the foot of the bed lay Prince, the collie puppy we had bought as a guard dog who turned out to be more of a lap dog. Who was I to resist his pleading brown eyes and the girls’ sweet begging? Prince, too, found room in the bed.
I thought to myself in those moments of bliss that this was all that counted: to have my girls happy and content, their sweet breaths against my neck. As far as Myrtle and Lucy were concerned, I was their natural mother, and they would never ever know otherwise. The two of them were mine through and through, and the love they felt for me was not tainted by questions or doubts. Jennie often thought of her natural mother, and Swanhild had only just lost hers, but the two I had raised from the day they were born carried no such scars. They were my angels, my all, and I swore in those moments of closeness on the pillows that I would always protect them from harm.
* * *
—
The farm had to earn; that was the only cloud on my otherwise bright horizon. It cost to set it up and it cost to have men working. If we could not make it pay, my money would be gone in no time at all. Despite all our efforts, I felt it moved too slowly. The money disappeared never to return, and I found myself sitting up at night in my new, elegant parlor, looking through the open door to the dining room, where straight-backed chairs with black velvet seats lined the polished table. I felt it then, deep in my heart, how dearly I wanted to keep it all: the husband, the house, and the land. This new me, Bella Gunness—Belle, as they called me in La Porte, because their tongues were lazy or they somehow misheard—was a woman of considerable means. She would never eat gruel or herring. I made a silent pact with the house in those nights, that beautiful old whorehouse with suicide in its walls, as damaged and bruised as myself. If it kept me, I would keep it, and we would be like sisters to each other. I would do what it took to protect her, always, and liked to think that she would do the same for me.
It put a strain on me, this pondering about money. I got angry with Peter when he spent needlessly, although I did not show it. This man was not like Mads; he would not be beaten or scolded and I had to curb my tongue. Instead, I sat alone at night, thinking and drinking his whiskey. I found that even if Peter treated me well, he did not respect my money.
Nothing to do for that, though, but hope that Brookside would spit the investments back in my lap. Still, it made me feel restless and angry to know that my cash dwindled in the bank. I found myself filling the pantry again with far more than we could eat. A rank scent of mold hit me whenever I opened the door. The situation made me careless too; maybe that was why it happened . . .
Baby Jennie, Peter’s younger daughter, had b
een sickly from the start, and she never seemed to heal but neither to get any worse. Her skin was red with rashes that her sharp, thin fingernails scratched, leaving red swellings and bloody marks. No ointment or salve could cure her, and her belly was large with gas. She ought to have gone with her mother, I think. She was born with a foot in the grave. Peter did not see that but kept smiling down at the girl, shushing and stroking her trembling limbs while she screamed herself wet and red. He rocked her cradle while smoking his pipe and hummed to the suffering child.
I used laudanum drops sometimes, and Peter agreed to that. He too wanted to give the child some peace, a good night’s sleep to conserve what little strength she had. It might have been too much—but I did not mean for it to be. The girl would have loved me as a mother had she lived, and I had no reason to harm her.
Whatever my intentions were, the girl died—and her father was not pleased.
29.
Peter kept visiting the small coffin laid out in the parlor to cry over Baby Jennie’s blue, waxen body. He dried his eyes with his handkerchief and dulled the sorrow with whiskey. I had not anticipated that; I had thought him a stronger man, accustomed as he was to death and grief. I did what I could to ease his loss and baked cookies and cakes, made roasts and nourishing soups. None of my cookery seemed to work, though, and my husband grew pale and thin before me. He went to the barn and did his work, but I could tell his heart was not in it. It puzzled me how broken he was, and one morning, after I had served him breakfast in the kitchen—ham and sausages, cheese and bread—I sat down before him and asked:
“Why is this so hard on you, dear husband? Children die, that’s the way of things. She is not the first child you have lost, so why is it so hard this time?”
He did not answer at first, just stirred his coffee with a dainty little spoon that looked spindly and fragile in his large hand. “Tell me again of the morning she died.”
“Well.” I placed my hands in my lap, on top of the filthy apron. “She’d a bad night, you know that. She could not rest. She continued wailing all morning while you were away. Then she finally grew quiet, and I checked on her. To me, it looked as if she slept at that time. I’m certain that she did, because she made small noises in her sleep. I left her to it then, because I had covered her hands with those mittens I made, and was certain she wouldn’t bloody herself. If she woke up I would hear it at once, as I never strayed far from the kitchen.”
“Had you given her anything to quiet her down?” His voice was as hollow as a winter storm.
“Nothing more than usual. I think it was all God’s work, Peter. I think it was he who called her home. Little Jennie was always too good for this world, such a little angel. Just as my Caroline was. I know what it’s like to lose a child, my dear, but we will get through this, the two of us together.”
Peter still looked ashen, but he nodded.
“She must be buried,” I reminded him, and touched his knee gently. The coffin was still in the house, closed but unburied, surrounded by paper angels her sisters and I had made. He just could not seem to make up his mind. “Did you grieve like this for all your children?”
“It was some time since I lost one. I cannot recall how I felt then.”
“Jennie was sick from the start. I was hoping but never certain she would live.” I tried to put a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged me off—I did not like that at all.
“She didn’t seem that weak to me.” He pressed his lips tightly together.
“You know how these things are; sometimes it happens fast. We ought to have her buried, though. She needs to be laid to rest.” I shook my head with exasperation.
“Swanhild won’t like to let her go. She’s mourning for her little sister.” Something stubborn had come into his expression, but I knew it was not so. The girl had recovered remarkably well and was outside this morning with Myrtle in tow, bothering the hired man, Smith, for sweets. It was Peter who could not let her go, and that angered me. This was our new beginning, our fresh and vibrant start. I did not want this inevitable death to tarnish all we had.
“Take her to Chicago.” I rose from the chair and turned my back on him. I could not look at him just then. The weakness I saw in him reminded me of Mads and roused the same disdain. I did not want to feel that. Not for him, my new husband. “We already have a plot there. We’d better put it to use.”
“You want to bury her with your late husband?” I could hear the revulsion in his voice.
“It’s my land and I bury who I want on it. It seems a waste to arrange for a new plot here. She cannot stay in the house much longer. The coffin already smells.”
“How can you speak of her like that?” I heard him rise from the chair behind me. “She is a dead child. A dead, innocent child—”
“Who nevertheless falls apart as all living things do when they die! You have to get her in the ground, that’s all.” The anger seeped from me then. What use was there in quarreling? The sooner I had this dealt with, the sooner I could have him back to his old self. I turned around and faced him. “I’m sorry, my dear, but it is hard for me to watch you grieve as you do. I wish you would take the child with you and arrange for a burial in the plot in Chicago. Your family needs your strength. I cannot take care of the farm on my own.”
“Of course.” His face was stiff and white. “Not to worry. I’ll take care of it.”
* * *
—
I thought the whole thing over and done with once the coffin was out of the house, but I was wrong. My husband still looked sick; he was brooding and often drunk. He stumbled to bed in late hours, only to wake up with headaches that lasted all day long.
“This was not what we agreed on,” I told him one night as he sat in the parlor drinking whiskey. “We agreed to run this place together as husband and wife. Now you leave me with all the work—”
“I am in mourning,” he saw fit to remind me.
“What man can afford such sentiments? You have other children to feed, a farm to run, and a wife to keep happy.”
“Have a drink with me, Bella.”
“I won’t! One of us has to keep a clear head.” And I had already had my drink in the kitchen. “Those pigs won’t raise themselves; they need to be looked after. You sitting here night after night feeling sorry for yourself will not produce the finest bacon on the market—”
“Feeling sorry for myself?” He laughed into the glass and sloshed the golden liquor around in there. “I just think I might have gotten a little more than I bargained for with you.” He had not touched me in weeks, not since the girl died. I ought to be patient as he had just lost a child, but it made me feel resentful.
“What does that mean? You knew what was expected when we married—”
“Do you know what they say about you in Chicago?” He swayed when he leaned forth in the chair and placed his hands on his knees.
“Yes.” I bit my lip hard to curb the anger. “I’m aware of what filthy things they say.”
“My friends think me a fool for marrying you—even my own mother does. They think it might be dangerous.”
I snorted loudly. “They say that of all women who come into more money than they can make in a lifetime.”
“They say that of women who come into that money through fire and death.”
“Life can be hard for any one of us.”
“Are you truly so unfortunate, Bella?” He hid his face behind the glass and looked at me through the amber liquid.
“No more than any other, I think. Many struggle in life.”
“Not as much as you, though, Bella. You’ve had poorer luck than anyone I know.”
* * *
—
I tried to ignore his moods. I took care of the house: washed and cooked, preserved and dried, cared for the animals and all four girls. Though Myrtle and Lucy were still young and a
t home, Swanhild and Jennie went to school several days a week. I thought it important that they were educated; the world was never kind to a woman lacking a keen mind. I often talked to Jennie about it. I wanted her to understand that a sweet face and a gentle husband was no one’s ticket to happiness. I wanted her to have a profession, I told her. A profession, property, and money of her own. Only then would she be safe.
“Safe from what?” she asked me one day. She was fourteen then, and so carefully looked after that she knew little of what was out there, ready to prey on her innocence. That was the price for being guarded—it left you both defenseless and naïve.
“From men who would use you and take all you have.” I was sitting before her at the kitchen table. The tabletop was heaped with vegetables, ready to be preserved.
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