The dinner was roast and mashed potatoes. The peas were buttery, the gravy cooked with wine. I wanted Jennie’s last meal at my table to be special. Mrs. Smith told us about her three children and their big house with servants in California. The professor told us about his studies at Harvard and Yale. I served ice cream, Jennie’s favorite, and then I excused myself to put the children to bed. The party was already sluggish from the drops in their desserts by then.
When I came back down, my guests were in the parlor with Jennie, having coffee and thimble-sized glasses of sherry. I brought out a bottle of champagne from the pantry, and a celebratory cake lavish with whipped cream. I laid out five plates and cut the cake, then added a special filling to three of the slices, pushing my syringe in through layers of sponge and cherries. Two pieces were left plain on the table when I went to serve the first three. It certainly would not do to mix them up.
I steeled my heart then, when I served the cake, and told myself it was not done yet and I could still change my mind. It was just chloral in there, it would not hurt one bit. Would only make her sleep like a babe, dream of California perhaps. Dream of all the good things in store.
We ate the cake and drank the champagne. Jennie seemed a little wary; she lifted a forkful of cake to her nose as if to sniff it. Her lack of trust annoyed me, even if I knew she had reason to be suspicious this time. When I caught her gaze across the table, she gave me a quick, quivering smile and shoved the cake in between her lips.
“A little too much champagne, perhaps?” I asked when Mrs. Smith’s head drooped down on her chest. The professor was already sleeping, his mouth open as he leaned back on the sofa.
“You used a hefty dose,” said James. Jennie slept on the chair with the glass in her hand and champagne spilling down her blue dress.
“She cannot know what’s coming.”
“I will do it, Bella, don’t you worry about that.”
We carried the professor down first, as he was the biggest and most likely to wake up. He lay there on the oilcloth, gaping like a fish when I cut his throat with my doctor’s knife, swift and easy like that.
James killed Miss Burns by strangling her in her sleep. He did not even bring her down to the cellar but did it there on the sofa. Her face turned red and then blue, her tongue protruding from her painted lips. Then he carried her downstairs.
Lastly, there was Jennie, the girl I had kept for eighteen years. She was light as a feather when we brought her down the steps, to the room she had so wanted to see.
“Off to California, then?” James leaned against the table, toying with the knife.
“Make it swift,” I said, and he did.
She was just a lump of meat after that, just gristle and bones and tendons. I worked swiftly, taking them apart. One gunnysack for each of them: torso, arms, legs, head. Six pieces in all. Around me, the walls were lined with preserves Jennie had helped me make; the jars with her favorite kind of spread glistened like red jewels in the kerosene light. She always had such nimble fingers; her fruit was peeled and cut so fine you could barely see the knife’s track.
“Such a waste,” James mused, watching me work. “Here you’ve fed and raised the girl, and now it has come to naught.”
“The world is hardly just.” I sawed through Miss Burns’s left leg.
“She should not have been so nosy.”
“No, she most surely should not.”
“It is a shame, though. I know you cared for the girl.”
“And look where that brought me.” I placed the leg in the sack. “What will I do if it happens again? I cannot send all my children away.”
He did not answer; he had brought a bottle of whiskey downstairs and offered me a drink. “Well, at least she never saw it coming.”
“She died thinking it would be all right.”
“Not everyone gets that: a happy death.”
I finished packing up Miss Burns. The cellar had never been so bloody; gristle and fluids were everywhere.
We carried the sacks outside and wheelbarrowed them to the pit I had made ready. I wondered if I would miss Jennie at all, or if she would slip from me without a trace.
Down in the ground, as if nothing had happened.
James shoveled in dirt. “There were fifteen hundred dollars in that satchel, just as we agreed on.”
“As if I would send my daughter to work as a whore.” I grabbed another shovel and helped him out.
“Laura was very excited when I told her about the innocent girl living in the country. Old, rich men are partial to them.”
“Well, no old men will touch her now.”
“And she won’t say a word about your enterprise.”
“She shouldn’t have looked in the cellar.”
“Curiosity can kill even the finest of cats.” He paused to take a swig of the bottle.
“Nothing to do for it now. It’s done.”
* * *
—
The next morning, when the children came down, the professor and his wife, Jennie, and James were gone. I gave them eggs and told them just how lucky she was to go to California to study.
I put an advertisement in the local newspaper, too, to share the good news that Jennie Olson had gone to California to attend the Norwegian seminary. I told people about it so many times—how good the professor and his wife were to her, what nice accommodations she had there—that I sometimes forgot that it was not so, that Jennie was rotting in the ground with the rest.
When I thought of Jennie, it was in California I saw her. She was a thriving young woman managing on her own, learning and gaining a profession.
42.
Nellie
Chicago and La Porte, 1907
Iwas puzzled by the letter from Bella telling me that Jennie had gone off to school in Los Angeles. What puzzled me more than anything else was that the girl had not written to me herself. Surely she would have been excited—and perhaps a little anxious—to travel so far away from home. It was not like her not to send a few words and ask for some reassurance. Bella was not always the best to give sage advice and calm a worried heart when excitement took hold of her. She only saw the possibilities in her schemes and could sometimes get annoyed if someone dared to question their magnificence, so I was surprised when no letter from Jennie arrived.
I was even more surprised when Nora did not hear from her either, though she anxiously awaited word, even more so than I did.
“Nothing today either,” she would say every night as she helped with the dishes after dinner. “When will she write?”
“It’s probably very exciting for her, coming to a new place with lots of new people. I’m sure she’ll write in time, when she has settled in.” I tried to make my voice sound calm and reasonable, and not reveal the feeling of unease that grew in me too.
“She has to know that I’m waiting,” Nora still fretted. “And it happened so suddenly, too. She never said anything before she left.”
“As Bella explained it, it was an opportunity that came out of nowhere, with this professor passing through.” As I repeated my sister’s words, I could sense the disharmony in them. The unlikeliness of such a thing happening was too great not to notice. “I will write to Jennie at the Norwegian seminary,” I told my daughter. “Surely she will reply.”
Bella had asked me to send all letters to Jennie to her in La Porte, for her to pass along, but I saw no sense in that, and asked her for the address in Los Angeles. It was when this request went unanswered that I started to worry in earnest. I did not name these worries, though; I only felt them there as something sticky and dark clinging to my mind, infusing every thought of the child with heaviness and shadows.
I knew that something was not right.
I asked a neighbor who had a friend with a niece who had gone to the seminary for the address, and after a while, she cam
e across the street and delivered it to my door. I then wrote a letter to Jennie and enclosed a note in the envelope, asking the staff at the seminary to give the letter to Jennie Olson. I did not tell a soul.
Nora, meanwhile, had gone to see Jennie’s sister, Mrs. Oleander, to ask her if she had heard from Jennie since she left. The answer she had gotten was disheartening.
“She only heard from Aunt Bella,” she told me, sitting by the kitchen table, biting her bottom lip raw. “It did not seem to bother her, though. She seemed happy that Jennie could go to school, and praised Aunt Bella’s generosity.”
“And why wouldn’t she?” My voice was still calm, still reasonable. “Not many girls get an opportunity like that.” It was what Bella had said in her letter. “We should all be happy for Jennie.”
“Yes, of course, but—why doesn’t she write?” Nora stretched out her legs. “I sent my letters to Aunt Bella over a month ago!”
“Sometimes the mail is slow,” I told her. “Perhaps she is busy at school—perhaps she had many letters to answer, and yours is next in line, just waiting.”
“No.” Nora sounded sure. “Jennie would have answered mine first.”
When a letter finally did arrive from Los Angeles, I let out a breath of relief—it was short-lived, however, as the contents were not what I had wished for. My own letter to Jennie was in there, still in its envelope, and there was a note too, informing me that Jennie was not a student at that establishment. I immediately sank down on a chair with the letter in my hand, and sat there for a good long while, just staring down at the floor before my feet. I remembered Jennie the last time I had seen her, that night in Bella’s kitchen, the worry and fear in her pretty blue eyes—and then I started to cry.
I went through several possibilities in my mind. I wondered if Bella herself had gotten the name of the school wrong, or if she had been tricked by that professor she said came to see them. Perhaps he was not a professor at all but a man with ill intent. But why would my sister not say so, if she suspected that the girl had been taken by fiends? Surely she would have looked for her then—visited every bordello in Chicago! And even if Jennie was not in Los Angeles but at another school somewhere else, she still would have written, if not to me, then at least to Nora . . .
I could not find a way out of the maze.
I waited for the usual eruption in my chest, the tightness and the rush of blood, the sense of my heart shattering—but this time it did not come. Instead, I was overtaken with a hopeless sort of sadness, a sense that all was lost. When I closed my eyes, it was not Jennie I saw, but Little Brynhild running across the moors, her square little shape coming toward me, wrapped in a woolen shawl, and with her brown hair hidden beneath a headscarf. Her shoulders were hunched against the wind, and her large eyes looked straight at me, reflecting the cold light from the sky, before her lips split in a joyous smile, beautiful and wild.
I remembered what I had promised myself, every night in the loft at Størsetgjerdet: that I would always protect her, even when God could not.
I knew I might be about to break that that promise.
* * *
—
I enlisted the help of Rudolph, who had every other Tuesday off from work. I told him we were going to La Porte but did not tell him why, only that I had to speak to his aunt. His wife, Maria, was heavily pregnant, so at first he was reluctant to go that far, and asked if I could take Nora instead, but even if that had been possible and she could beg a day off work, I did not want to. I found I wanted to take my son not only for the aid and company but for protection too. This worried me even more than the task itself—though it was bound to be unpleasant.
I knew my family worried about my lack of sleep and my melancholy mood, but we all blamed my bad back for the changes. After Jennie went away, it had become harder to pretend, though, as my tears were never far away and I had problems following a conversation. John often asked, though he had been experiencing some poor health himself, and was often tired and craving rest. He was grateful, I think, when I told him it was nothing, and to take his powder and go to sleep. It suited me fine; I could not share my dark thoughts with anyone. It was as if the words were locked up in a vault deep inside, and speaking them aloud would cause all sorts of bad things to happen. It was my pain and mine alone, until I knew just what to do with it. I scolded myself countless times for silencing Myrtle, for encouraging Jennie—and then I sternly reminded myself that I did not know for sure.
But I had to know, I did.
Which was why I went to La Porte, with a shivering heart and a tormented soul, bringing along my reluctant son, who would rather stay at home.
“Has this to do with Jennie?” he asked as we sat opposite each other on the train, the newspaper resting on his knee. “I know that Nora worries about her.”
I shook my head but did not reply.
“I hope Aunt Bella keeps a blanket in the carriage—it’s terribly cold.” He looked out at the bleak landscape. “Your back does not much like it when the temperature drops.”
“She won’t be there with the carriage.” My voice was very hoarse. “She doesn’t know that we’re coming.” I ignored his puzzled look. “We’ll rent a buggy when we get there—and Rudolph, you will wait outside in the farmyard while I speak to her. I don’t want you inside while I do.”
“Mama?” The puzzlement on his handsome face increased. “What is this about? Did you have a falling-out?”
I just shook my head again—I could not tell him what it was.
* * *
—
I found Bella alone in the kitchen; she was at the table, cutting up a side of pork, deftly swinging the cleaver. The blood on her hands did nothing to lessen my unease as I stepped inside through the door to the dining room, without even bothering to knock.
The cleaver sang in the air, cut through the meat, and met the sturdy table with a bang.
“Bella,” I said as I paused inside the door, and looked at her broad back before me, the curve of her neck and the mass of hair haphazardly pinned to her head. The cleaver sang and hit the table once more, and then she turned to me with a smile on her lips.
“Nellie!” She wiped her hands on her apron, leaving thick, red smears on the worn cotton. “What are you doing here? Are you alone?” She arched her head to look behind me, through the half-open door. Her face fell a little. “Did something happen?”
I shook my head. I had not found my words yet.
She cocked her head and lifted her chin, just a little. Something cold stirred in her eyes. “What is it, then? Why are you here?” Her lips were no longer smiling.
“Where is Jennie?” My voice was like something out of a cave—a vast, dark place built of dread.
She turned and set to bustle with the kettle on the range. “What do you mean? You know where she is! She went to the sem—”
“No! She did not!” I would not have any lies. Her back tensed up before me, whether from anger or fear I did not know. “What did you do, Little Brynhild?”
She turned to me then, her eyes black with anger. She held the kettle in her hand as if she were about to swing it. Her lips were pressed tightly together in a pale, hard line. “I have done nothing but to send her off to one of the best schools there is! She will study law—become something!” But her rage did not support her claim.
“Well, she’s not there, so that didn’t happen!” I found some spark in myself at last. “Your husbands I can look away from, as I think you may have been burned—but not this, Little Brynhild! I cannot look away from the destruction of a child!” I stomped my foot and closed my fists; the tears burned in my eyes.
“I have done no such thing,” she hissed, but the kettle swung back and forth in her arm. “I would be very careful of throwing accusations of which you have no proof!”
“The proof is right here!” I screamed at her. �
�The girl is not to be found! How long do you think it will take before her family starts to worry? Mine already does—you cannot walk away from this!”
“The last time I saw Jennie, she was fit as a fiddle, and on her way to Los Angeles,” she hissed. “And I have heard from her many times since.”
“Show me the letters.” My voice was shrill. “Show me Jennie’s letters, and I will believe you!”
She shook her head, and something like a spasm twisted her features for a moment. “I did not keep them—the children took them and lost them in the barn.”
“Oh, you’re a liar,” I accused her through gritted teeth. “You did away with her! What happened, Little Brynhild? Did she find out what you do in the cellar?” She came at me then, just a step, but it was enough that I stepped back as well. “She wondered about that, and the locked room filled with trunks upstairs. She worried that those men never left!” I could no longer keep silent—the words came rushing like a landslide. I no longer cared what happened to me next; the words wanted out, and I let them.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her voice was disturbingly calm. “Coming in here, setting my children up against me! Encouraging them to disobey! Marzipan cake! What right do you have, Nellie? What right?” She swung her arm with the kettle out in a wide arc so that it hit the counter with a loud bang; the sound of splintering wood forced its way through the haze of my rage. On the table, the bloody cleaver was smiling, sharp and shiny, like a mirror.
“Rudolph is outside in the buggy.” I had no tools to intimidate her but hoped that the words would be enough. “He’ll go for help if you hurt me. I only need to call out!”
“That was a foolish thing to come here with your accusations—what do you think will happen next?” But my words had made an impact, I could tell; her gaze kept darting to the door, and the power with which she swung the kettle was not quite as forceful as before.
In the Garden of Spite Page 38