by Sarah Miller
She woke when the child nuzzled at her breast, drawing out a few teaspoons of broth-colored fluid at a time. As she nursed, Caroline watched Charles and Mary and Laura as a stranger might see them. What she saw captivated her. Just like Charles, she was forever saying of Laura. A certain crinkle of Laura’s snub nose as she laughed or the set of her chin when she was vexed was enough to make Caroline think, Just like her pa. Yet to someone like Mrs. Scott, who had not spent years tallying their similarities, Laura was simply Laura—a boisterous, eager little girl, shy, yet given to impulsiveness, where Charles was genial and even-tempered. Mirror images of each other, Caroline mused: the same, yet reversed.
Mary was no less a revelation. Proud at first of the way Mary laid the table and swept the floor without being asked, Caroline began to notice how Mary put herself always within Mrs. Scott’s view as she worked. Busy getting underfoot, Caroline so often said. But the way Mary paraded about with the broom, it was suddenly clear the child was not so much eager to help as to be seen helping. The floor was clean, and still Mary swept doggedly at the boards, glancing at Mrs. Scott more and more pointedly. With a sorrowful pang, Caroline realized that her little helpmeet cared not at all for the household tasks she performed so willingly. Mary mimicked them only for Caroline’s approval.
Caroline’s fingers worried the hem of the baby’s swaddling as she watched the vignette playing out before her. Mary swept on, incapable of understanding that Mrs. Scott might have no praise for her at all. A flush of mingled shame and pity crept up Caroline’s neck as she grasped her own mistake: in trying to keep Mary unconscious of her beauty, Caroline had instead marred it with another kind of conceit. Her eyes retreated to the little one in her arms, unwilling to watch her eldest daughter grope so openly for admiration. Likely Mrs. Scott had seen Mary’s performance for what it was right away and did not care to applaud it. Every swish of the broom in her ears swept the blush further across Caroline’s skin. She could see it as well as feel it now, spreading down her chest toward Carrie. It must not reach the baby, she chided herself. Her embarrassment did not feel strong enough to put the child in peril, but all the same Caroline would not risk tarnishing her. But she could not stop it at Mary’s expense. Caroline herself had cultivated Mary’s pride with her unstinting praise. Showing her approval now, with Mrs. Scott looking on, would only worsen it. Yet at the same time Caroline could not bear the possibility that the bulk of Mary’s pleasures had become secondhand, her smiles from others’ satisfaction rather than her own delight. Anything less than a compliment, no matter how gentle, would cut the child bone-deep. Caroline’s chest tightened as she fumbled for a solution, and she knew Carrie should not take one more swallow.
Caroline slipped a fingertip into the corner of Carrie’s mouth and broke her lips from the nipple. “Mary,” she said as Carrie’s mouth worked in confusion, “would you like to hold the baby?” The broom stilled. Mary’s face went round with awe. Caroline propped Charles’s pillow into the corner beside her and patted the mattress. Mary came scrambling so fast, Caroline almost laughed. Mary arranged herself with her feet jutting straight out and her elbows bent, palms up, as if she were about to receive a stack of planks.
Caroline laid the baby across Mary’s lap. Mary sat stone-still, as though so much as a blink might make Carrie cry. Paralyzed with wonder and terror, Caroline thought, just as she herself had been the first time Polly laid Mary into her arms.
Bemused, Mrs. Scott came to stand over the bed with her fists sunk into her hips. “Well?” she asked Mary. “What do you think of your baby sister?”
“She’s heavy,” Mary said.
Caroline felt her cheeks dimple. Carrie weighed a scant five pounds, she guessed, but for a child accustomed to a rag baby made of cotton and wool, Carrie’s heft was considerable. Mary looked and looked. Carrie was such a small baby, but Mary studied her as though there were too much of her to see all at once. Carrie’s face wrinkled, then puckered, and she gave a cry that struck the air like a splatter.
“Here, now,” Mrs. Scott said, leaning across the bed for the baby. But Mary put her face beside Carrie’s crinkled red ear and whispered, “Shhhhhhhhhh.” Carrie did.
Mrs. Scott chuckled. “She’ll make a good little mother herself one day,” she said, and Mary glowed.
Mrs. Scott would have stayed Saturday, to get supper and help with the children’s baths, she said, but Charles presented her with an enormous jackrabbit and insisted she head home in time to roast it for her family. “I can manage the supper and the bathing,” Charles promised.
And he did. He fitted a spit into the fireplace and turned two plump prairie hens on it until their skins glistened and the juice ran hissing into the coals. Then he carefully carved a breast from the bones and brought it to Caroline on a plate, alongside a heap of sliced Indian breadroot and a bowl of blackberries bobbing in fresh milk. Mary and Laura washed and wiped the dishes while Charles brought in the washtub and put water on to boil.
Caroline watched him line the dishpan with a towel, then mix hot and cold water and dip his elbow in to test it. He set the pan down on the hearth and came to the side of the bed. She started to shift the baby toward him, but Charles reached up over her head, into the crevice formed by the meeting of the wall and the roof and brought down a bear grease tin. He opened it and laid a tissue-wrapped packet in her palm. “For you and Carrie,” he said.
Caroline turned back the soft blue wrapping. Inside lay a creamy cake of pressed soap, pale and smooth as butter. The faintest whiff of roses brushed her nostrils. Her lips parted in wonder. “Charles, where did you ever—”
“On our way through Independence.”
Months ago. She saw herself sitting on that wagon seat outside the store, wary of the Indians, wishing that Charles would only hurry. And all the while he had been inside, picturing this moment in his mind and choosing something small and fine to mark it. With all his worries over prices and land offices, he had thought of this—of her. She looked up at him, her eyes welling. “Oh, Charles.” It was not much more than a whisper. He rubbed at the back of his neck, sheepish and pleased, then bent to gather up Carrie for her bath.
Carrie squalled until she vibrated with fury, perfectly incensed by the touch of the water. Mary and Laura scrunched up their shoulders and covered their ears. Charles was not perturbed. He bathed Carrie with the sweet white soap, toweled her dry, and folded her into a clean flannel blanket, humming as he worked. “Clean as a hound’s tooth,” he pronounced, fitting the baby back into the hollow of Caroline’s arm.
Caroline touched her lips to Carrie’s fine black hair and breathed in. The scent of pollen still tickled her nose, but the raw newness of it was gone, shrouded by the smell of the store-bought soap. She kissed the baby’s head, smiling over the pinch of disappointment in her throat. “Thank you, Charles,” she said.
When the girls had had their turn in the washtub—they’d splashed more than they’d scrubbed, but Charles made sure to soap their hair and kept the suds from their eyes—Charles refilled the tub and draped the wagon cover between the bedstead and the mantel, screening off the hearth for her.
Caroline stood gingerly, her feet wider apart than usual. Between her legs it felt as though there was not enough space for what had always been there. One foot, then another went into the washtub. She gripped the rim and crouched slowly into it.
The water was so soft and warm, it felt like part of her. “Oh,” she breathed, more quietly than the crackling fire. She sat still a full minute, letting it touch her. Then Caroline unpinned the broad linen band Mrs. Scott had put around her the day Carrie was born and unwrapped herself. Her middle eased out like a flounce, the skin shirred around her navel. She sighed. The delaine, folded in tissue in the trunk at the foot of the bed would not fit her now, nor for months to come. A frivolous thought—there was no call for such a dress in this place. She washed herself tentatively, wondering whether the soap would mask her own smell the way it had changed Carrie�
�s newborn scent. The blood turned the cloth and then the water faintly pink.
Carrie’s voice sputtered on the other side of the canvas, and Caroline felt the tingle of her milk. In a moment it ran in hot rivulets down her wrinkled belly. It was true milk now, white enough to cloud the water where it dripped. She felt an easing in her breasts, the relief of a pressure so gradual that the building of it had barely registered. Caroline gazed fondly at the tub, the fire. There could be no pleasure in lingering now. It was a shared thirst. Carrie cried, and Caroline’s chest opened like a moistened sponge, as if to absorb the child back into her.
Caroline stood and peeked over the wagon cover. Charles was perched at the foot of the bed, swaying forward and back to soothe the baby as best he could with no chair to rock her. “Hush, Carrie,” he chanted. “Hush-hush-hush. Ma’s coming; Ma’s coming just as soon as she can.” Carrie took no comfort from his assurances. Her voice turned gravelly and her fists balled.
“Unbutton your nightshirt,” Caroline whispered as she toweled herself. He gave her a dubious look. She nodded encouragement, and Charles did as he was told. “Lie down and put her across your chest,” Caroline said. He laid the baby with her head over his heart, just as a woman would do. “Now nest your hands around her. She’s used to being held tight as a bean in its shell.”
His hands blanketed Carrie’s little body. One breath, then two, and the tempest subsided. The baby hiccoughed and blinked, as if shocked by her own contentment. Caroline smiled to herself, knowing the feel of those hands spanning her waist. A flicker of envy warmed her skin at the thought of what it would be like to fit entirely within them.
She stood, pressing the towel to her breasts, her feet reluctant to lift from the water. Carrie would wait, cozied up that way on her pa’s bare chest. With luck the baby might even fall asleep. But Caroline did not sink back into the tub. Moments ago she had wanted to stay in that warm, soft water, to pull it over her like a quilt and soak until morning. Seeing Charles and Carrie together, Caroline wanted only to be beside them.
She slipped her nightdress over her damp skin and fitted her body back into the hollow it had left in the straw tick. Between them was the little peak she and Mrs. Scott had made, lying so deferentially side by side. Caroline leaned across it and pillowed her head on Charles’s shoulder. She could not see his face lying this way, but as they gazed at the baby she began to see his features reflected in Carrie, as though Carrie were a little mirror tilted sideways. His narrow chin was there with no whiskers to hide behind, and his high hairline.
“She has your eyes,” Charles said.
She did, poor thing. “Newborn babies always have eyes like slate. They’ll brighten in time. Mary’s and Laura’s did.”
Charles’s whiskers brushed her forehead as he turned. She could feel him looking quizzically down on her. “Is that what you think of your eyes?”
“Ma always said they were gray as the December day I was born.” His were like a woman’s, such a delicate blue as she’d only seen painted on fine china.
He traced her brow bone with his thumb. “Your ma was wrong,” he said. “Your eyes are gray like flannel, and there’s nothing half so warm and soft in the world as flannel.”
Caroline’s eyes flickered up, then her face ripened with a smile as the compliment swirled through her. She pressed her cheek, red and round as an apple skin, into his shoulder.
He chuckled softly at her shyness, rumbling under the baby. Carrie crinkled awake.
The sounds the two of them made, his bass and her tremolo, rippled beneath Caroline’s skin. Her pulse burgeoned through her body, and a fresh burbling of blood warmed the path Carrie had made through her.
Caroline sat up and inched herself as far toward the headboard as the flannel pad allowed while the child gritched at the air and began to sputter. “Here, Charles,” she said and uncovered her breast. “Let me.”
Charles lifted the fussing baby from his chest as though her flinty cries might strike fire. Carrie’s lips buttoned onto her. Charles watched as the frantic movements of Carrie’s jaw subsided into contentment.
“Caroline Ingalls, you are a wonder.”
She looked down at the child, drawing its current of sustenance through her. Most any woman in the world could do as she had done, but Caroline could not deny his wonder. There was nothing Charles could not fashion, given the wood and tools to do it with, but she had formed this child—this creature of breath and bone—out of nothing but a spurt. She had not even begun with an intention. And now when the child cried, there was milk.
Charles looked out the window and then back at her. “I feel like a man who’s found Canaan,” he said.
The land of milk and honey. She saw it as he did, in the prairie grass, honey-gold in the wind, the running creek, the cow and calf, and now in the flow of her own milk. They had never wanted for shelter or game in the Big Woods, but this land was different. It seemed to lie with its arms open, inviting them to suckle freely of its bounty. When spring came she would trust her seeds to the good, rich ground. If this land would feed her children, it would become another sister to her. We came unto the land whither thou sentest us . . . , she thought, as if speaking to the place itself, and this is the fruit of it.
Twenty-Two
“You be Ma and I’ll be Mrs. Scott,” Mary said to Laura. “My rag doll will be the baby.”
Caroline’s cheeks ached from holding back her smiles. The new center of Mary’s world lay nursing in Caroline’s arms. Overnight Mary had become a miniature nursemaid: earnest, attentive, and entirely unconscious of how darling she was as she bustled about the cabin. When she could not fuss over her new sister, she practiced with her doll. It would only be a matter of time, Caroline supposed, before Mary tried to suckle that poor cotton baby. Caroline’s lips twitched at the thought. All day long, she wanted to let the delight tumble out of her, but she could not let Mary realize that her grown-up airs only made her more childlike.
Laura was braced against the doorjamb, having a tug-of-war with Jack over a stick of firewood. “I don’t—want—to play—inside,” she said, as though Jack were jerking each piece of the answer out of her.
“I’ll let you hold my rag doll,” Mary promised.
Caroline’s eyebrow arched. That was a sacrifice, coming from Mary. Laura was tempted, and her grip faltered just as Jack’s playful growl changed. He let loose the stick, and Laura plopped onto the ground. “Jack!” she cried as the bulldog turned from her, his throat rumbling. Then, “Oh! It’s a man coming, Ma!”
“You mustn’t shout, Laura,” Caroline reminded her. “Is it Mr. Edwards?”
Laura shook her head. “A new man.”
Caroline shifted to look outside. A bay dun, mounted by a sandy-haired man, was trotting up the path from the creek. Sunlight glinted off a pair of round spectacles, giving the rider the look of a schoolteacher. Jack erupted into a fury of barking, and the horse shied. Charles’s voice followed, calling off Jack and hallooing a welcome from the stable.
Mary ran to soothe her rag doll from the noise. Caroline tugged at her open bodice, trying not to dislodge Carrie from her feeding. The calico made a poor shield. “Close the door, please, Laura,” she said.
“Aw, Ma!”
“You may stay outside if you keep well out of Pa’s way. Close the door behind you.”
Wishing again for her rocking chair, Caroline resettled herself onto the crate with her back against the wall and her ear cocked to the window. The wind seemed to blow the centers from the men’s words, so she could hear only where one ended and another began. The tempo of their conversation was absurdly clipped: three words from the stranger, one from Charles, another from the stranger, two more from Charles. Perhaps the man spoke no English, Caroline decided. She gave up making sense of it and returned to the task at hand.
The baby’s attention had drifted, too. Her eyes were closed and her tongue poked lazily at the nipple, sending a thread of warmth trailing below Caroline’s h
ips, to the place that belonged to begetting and birthing. Caroline tickled under Carrie’s chin to remind her, and the thin red lips resumed their muscular kneading. Neither of her older girls had taken to idling at the breast as this new baby did. She suckled in short spurts, tugging at the nipple half a dozen times, then slackening, content to make a meal of each swallow. It put Caroline in mind of the dainty way Mary sipped at the tin cup she shared with Laura, but it troubled her, too, that a child so new would be willing to make do with so little. “Take your fill, baby girl,” she coaxed.
She did not speak to the baby by name, as the others did. To Caroline, Carrie was a word whose meaning was still forming. The child herself had left her body, but was still so small and near as to seem a part of Caroline—a cutting grafted back into her side. Sharing her name with the baby only blurred the lines further.
Mary, being the first and only child in the house, had been Mary straightaway, though after the five years it had taken to become Ma, Caroline had loved even more to hear herself say the baby, my baby, our baby, as though saying it somehow made it truer than holding Mary in her arms. This child was spending her first days as Laura had—an anonymous little creature, barely beginning to peel away from the mold her sisters had left behind.
For now, Caroline contented herself with looking at the child and thinking Caroline Celestia, as though it were the Latinate name for spindly, black-haired baby girls native to the Kansas prairie. Even if such a taxonomy existed, she mused, it could tell her only so much, for although a seed called Ipomoea purpurea would always unfurl into a morning glory, it was anyone’s guess whether the blooms would be pink, purple, or blue.
Mary came to stand beside them and peeped over Caroline’s elbow. “Ma?” she said. Caroline knew what the question would be. She had promised Mary could mind the baby when she’d finished feeding. Minding meant little more than sitting on the big bed, watching her sister sleep, but Mary reveled in the responsibility.