3
“I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the heart appoints.”
Elisabeth touched herself through her petticoat, rubbing and rubbing, desperate. The devil had settled inside her blood, stoking a fire, burning her up. Sitting by the rushing river as the inky California night pooled around, she pulled off her boots, careful not to spill out the coins she’d hidden from Nate. She rolled out of her stockings and slipped her toes into the water. It felt cool yet silky, too, and soaked the bottom of her dress, but she didn’t care. She hiked up her skirt, and a delicious draft glided over her bare skin, tingling. The air floated gentle and dry, nothing like the sticky air in the East, hanging heavy and thick.
Falling back in the sand beside a boulder, she ran a hand between her legs, remembering Nate kissing her in the alleyway behind the mill in Lowell. He’d pushed her up against the bricks with a kiss that smothered away her sadness at losing Lucy. His lips had tasted soft as butter on her neck as he whispered she was his everything. Smarter than all the other mill girls in all the boardinghouses he’d visited with his book-lending business, he’d said. After, he’d brought flowers and books, and read her poetry. He’d sucked her in with his fancy words and liquid blue eyes. Now he hardly ever kissed her. A peck on the cheek here and there. Nothing so moving.
After supper at Shannon and Cady’s, she’d tried to tempt him once again, saying she’d clean up better. They’d found a bathhouse straddling the creek but got a shock at the posted price of two dollars a soak. Three for hot water. Nate said a bath wasn’t a wise buy, after forking over the ridiculous sum of nine dollars for the chicken supper. They’d need to save the rest of their money for food. Instead of making the long walk back to the claim in the dark, Nate suggested they sleep outside the tent, down by the river in the night air.
“We’ll buy some food stores in the morning before heading out,” he said.
They curled beside a boulder, and Nate put his arms around her, warming her. They breathed together, yet mismatched and out of time, until Nate started fidgeting as usual, tossing about in the sand.
“I can’t get comfortable,” Nate said, sitting up.
“Let me help,” she said, placing a hand on his lap.
“Aw, ’Lizbeth. It’s no good. My nerves are kicked up again tonight.”
“I feel the same. All nervous and wiggly. It’s probably the supper making us so. We haven’t had full stomachs since I can’t remember,” she said.
“It’s no good,” Nate responded.
“We just have to practice, is all. Get used to each other,” she said.
“No. The digging. The digging’s no good. I think I’m doing it wrong,” he said. “That’s why I haven’t found any gold yet. There must be a special technique. A secret I gotta know.”
“Digging?”
“I’m going back to ask Captain Shannon.”
When Nate got up, she sighed, irritated.
“Please don’t spend our money on drink.”
“Not a chance, darling,” he said, kissing the top of her head.
Lying alone by the American River, she waited impatient for his return. She loosened the collar on her blouse and wiped off the tired stink under her armpits, wishing she had a bit of lavender soap to wash proper. Then she slipped both hands in her drawers. She didn’t mean to start the pleasuring, but thinking of all those men stirred her up. Before she knew it, wetness dripped between her thighs. Touching herself was a poor substitute for a man. She couldn’t help herself. She wanted more. Working both hands back and forth, she wiggled her bottom into the warm sand like a woman deprived of a special love you get when agreeing to marry. Perhaps the wildness of California itself was infecting her, burrowing deep into her bones. Or maybe she simply wanted too much. Either way, she yearned for a husband’s touch. Not the fumbling affairs she and Nate shared under the quilt after they’d married, over so quick she hardly got going. She wanted something else altogether. She wanted Nate to set about her with passion. But he always clammed up on her, hiding his pearl of love away tight.
Now all that pent-up want was turning into a naughty thirst quenched only by her own fingers. Biting her lip, she rubbed that little knobby bit faster, aching and throbbing and swelling and surging as the water danced over the river rocks and a sharp sliver of western moon rose up behind the black silhouette of trees on the ridge beyond. She slid a finger inside and a squeal escaped her mouth as her familiar New England sensibility of shame slipped off like an onion skin, revealing the bittersweet rawness of lust. Peeling away. Growing. Turning over. Transforming into an insanity of want. She forgot about Nate as her whole body vibrated with nature. She imagined those men from earlier in the day. Gathered around. Reaching out. Touching her, naked. With strong hands, large and soft and rough. All over her. Offering up warmth and passion and love. And that Californio with the dark eyes. Taking her for his own. Touching her. She imagined her fingers as his fingers. As his body, moving in and out with frenzy. Rising and rising, reaching for more and still more, sending her into a stream of sultry shuddering as an explosion of stars shot down from above.
A thin strip of moonlight shimmered across the river and a coyote moaned in melancholy from somewhere up on the ridge. Elisabeth felt as lonesome as ever and wondered what lies she’d write to Louisa May in the morning.
4
September 1850
My Dearest Friend Louisa May,
I trust this letter finds you well and settled into your new family lodgings in Boston. You will be relieved to know we finally arrived at my father’s claim and he welcomed us joyful, expressing deep gratitude we’d come so far to find him. As I suspected, he accepted Nate as the ideal son-in-law. We spend our nights together around the hearth fondly recalling the Goodwin Farm with Mother and Samuel and Lucy. Oh, the joy of family, Louisa! Our reunion gives me a sense of wholeness, fulfilling my every longing for security and happiness.
Father’s claim is expansive, covering a wide swath of the river basin. He holds a second claim a few miles upriver, where he spends a good deal of time, giving me and Nate the privacy much desired in a young marriage. He visits every Sunday for supper, when we discuss our weekly yield of gold from the river. Our physical comfort is much more than I expected in such a wild place as yet unsettled. The sun shines in a sky of brilliant blue with an autumn air blowing strangely warm. There is no hint of the coming winter signaled by a morning chill and only a few river birch burst familiar in a show of orange and yellow leaves. The beauty overwhelms and confuses me with a breathtaking constancy of the vibrant green pine trees. It’s true what you’ve read in the papers. Many men are swept up in gold folly, succumbing to the surge like Odysseus’s sailors in the land of the Lotus-eaters, driven by blind greed. Fortunately, my dearest Nate has not fallen in with that lot. He stands by my side giving me a singular companionship I could’ve only hoped for in a husband. So, you must now forget your worry that I married in haste as a purely economic resolution to my prior unfortunate circumstances. Traveling for so many months has not at all proved hard on my marriage nor strained our collective sensibilities, as you suggested might happen. On the contrary, settling down on Father’s claim was the right decision worth the arduous travel. This splendid place shifts us closer with affections and expectations beyond our imaginings, by the day. Nate gives me more than a wife should want and cares for me better than I’d thought a man capable, dressing me in finery of silk and insisting I have three pairs of gloves and a new church hat with an ostrich feather, if you can imagine! He even procured me a horse in San Francisco to carry me comfortably up into the foothills, saying no wife of his should rip her stockings walking the river trails on foot. I grow embarrassed by the riches he bestows upon me, as you know I am a simple woman not requiring luxury.
I do not blame you for doubting our union, as I understand a woman without a husband cannot know yet of such delicate conjugal matters. One day soon, God willing, you, too, will
be blessed with the love of a man such as Nate. Until then, rest assured I am not on a journey of doubt but have found a home in my marriage, sheltering me in the truest of loves.
But how I wish you were here beside me to share in this glorious untamed nature, as I know how you dread the crowds and muck of the dreary Boston city! You must long for Hillside House in Concord, as I, too, long for the Goodwin Orchard next door in its finer days. Considering the urgent social work of your mother, you’ve not acquiesced but adapted to a difficult situation for the sake of family, as all women must. I’ve no doubt you will manage in the cramped quarters of the city apartment with grace. As you say, dear Louisa, our pride and taste and comfort suffer for love. We rarely bend a new condition to our will but bend ourselves into the new condition. I may remind, your present predicament provides far less than the discomfort you endured living through your father’s bungled experiment at Fruitlands, however noble. Thus adapt you will, as the seasons change.
Meanwhile, please express my most heartfelt love to your mother and your sweet sisters. Tell them I miss our evenings whiling away in lively curiosity at Hillside House, and our innocent days running through the fields toward Mr. Emerson’s library for our lessons with Miss Foord. Most especially, convey to your father and Mr. Emerson that “Self-Reliance” has been my greatest source of strength since leaving Concord. At your earliest convenience, please post word to Culoma Town, California, sharing your current situation and success in writing. You simply must.
Your loving friend in the West,
Elisabeth Parker
5
“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”
After posting the letter, Elisabeth asked around Culoma town after her father. She knew it was stupid, still stewing over where he’d gone and if he’d come back. Even so, she couldn’t help herself. Near the livery, a tall black woman squinted at Elisabeth from behind a rough pine table, then pointed to a board carved with the word Bakery hung over the door of a shack. When the woman lifted up a rag, Elisabeth smelled the fresh-baked bread and her mouth watered.
“You wanna buy a slice?” asked the woman.
“You know a man named Henry Goodwin?”
“Who’s you?”
“Elisabeth Parker.”
“Nandy Gootch,” said the woman, nodding matter-of-fact.
Nandy grabbed a serrated knife with big hands, knobby like a man. Her skin didn’t look black but only a shade darker than Elisabeth’s, browned up from the California sun. But Nandy was smoother like a caramel apple, not at all uneven and splotchy with freckles like Elisabeth. Nandy wiped the plank table with a wet rag, whistling and rubbing the pine clean, polishing nothing to polish. Behind the table an open fire burned low with a Dutch oven tended by a lanky-looking black man wearing a vest over a flax shirt open at the neck. He crouched, poking at the embers with a wooden stick. Seeing Elisabeth, he pulled his leather vest straight and sniggered.
“A dollar a slice. Two for butter,” said Nandy.
Elisabeth stuck out her chin, shocked at the prices for the least little thing. Still, chatting with this woman felt right, seeing as she was the only other woman around. But buying a slice with the coins stuffed in her boot seemed wrong. She planned on saving them, just in case.
“I’m not buying.”
Nandy flopped down the rag with a thump and put her hands on her hips. Squinting, her thin eyes nearly disappeared inside the full folds of her face. She wore a blue kerchief covering her head with soft puffs of hair popping out. She was much older than Elisabeth’s twenty years, and with a filled-out waist she looked better fed.
“You drooling over my bread. That’s what you doing.”
“I’m not drooling.”
She was, in fact, drooling. She wanted to grab the whole loaf, biting off hunks without even slicing it. And she was jealous too. Jealous that this woman looked so healthy while her dress hung loose.
“All the folks drool over my bread.”
“Not me.”
“You’s plain lying.”
“Nope. Simply conversating.”
“You got money?”
“Not two bits for bread.”
“You a beggar girl.”
“Nope.”
“Who’s you then?”
“Henry’s daughter.”
Nandy smiled with the most beautiful white teeth, big and square and completely straight.
“I knew you was coming,” said Nandy.
Elisabeth ran her tongue along the inside her mouth, feeling the uneven, small, and rather misshapen teeth, wondering if Nate found them ugly.
“How’s that?”
“You married?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s your man?”
“Over at Shannon and Cady’s stocking up.”
“You said you got no money.”
“I said no such thing.”
“Little ’uns?”
Elisabeth clasped her hands in front her, thinking she’d never have children if Nate didn’t give her any loving.
“You’re awful nosy.”
“Come ’round here,” said Nandy, flicking a finger at Elisabeth for her to follow behind the cabin.
“Why?”
“That’s fine, you don’t wanna hear my story. I gots work to do anyhow,” she said.
Nandy grabbed a lump of dough from under a red-and-white checkered towel and flopped it on the table, pounding and pounding the dough with her fist, then lifted another towel, revealing a steaming loaf of bread. The smell made Elisabeth’s stomach ache, and she twisted her plain gold wedding band on her finger and swallowed. An emptiness stuck dry in her throat.
“Did you hear me earlier, asking after Henry Goodwin?” Elisabeth asked.
“I ain’t no idiot.”
“Never claimed you were.”
“What do you think I’m doing out here? Traveled to the West like a fancy lady?”
“I suppose not.”
“Now, I done told you, I got a story.”
“What story?”
“You like stories?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“If it’s true.”
“You only like ’em true?” Nandy asked.
“I don’t mind lies, as long as I know they’re lies,” said Elisabeth.
“Well, I got a good one.”
“A lie? Or a truth?”
“How ’bout you tell me which, once I tell it to you,” Nandy said.
“I’m listening.”
They walked behind the cabin to a crude cut bench under an oak. Elisabeth sat next to Nandy in the afternoon heat, examining the dirt for any sign of ants. She had a terrible fear of those buggers, crawling creepy all over her and getting up into places she’d rather keep to herself.
“I got quince,” whispered Nandy, pointing to a canvas sack leaning on the tree trunk.
Elisabeth grew irritated at the woman’s bragging.
“What’s the story?”
“I is ’bout to tell it. You got to be patient.”
Nandy folded her arms across her chest, sighing loud. Then she closed her eyes like she struggled to remember. Elisabeth waited. When Nandy started breathing deep and slow, Elisabeth thought the woman might’ve fallen asleep. Minutes passed. The oak overhead cast large leafy shadows on the yellow grass, floating and flitting on wafts of wind like dancing ladies. Elisabeth pushed her boots back and forth, crunching the grass flat to make a proper dance floor for the leafy ladies. The day grew long and languid as she waited. When a jay squawked in the distance, she leaned in close toward Nandy’s face, taking in a smell of warmth and sugar. She poked Nandy in the shoulder gentle and her flesh gave way to ropy strength underneath. Nandy jerked with a start and began meandering toward a tale.
“Me and Billy,” she said, pointing to the man tending the fire. “We was brung from Missouri five months ago. Brung out by Master Sappington.”
Elisabeth sat back down on the b
ench, listening.
“Master Sappington comes back from the diggings every afternoon wanting his bakery money, but he don’t know nothing ’bout no quince,” she said, winking. “Found these over the ridge. Sweetest quince I ever ate.”
Nandy handed one to Elisabeth.
“Go ’head. Smell it.”
She turned the fruit in her hand. Green and hard and shaped a bit squat, it smelled familiar, like an underripe pippin.
“I can’t pay,” said Elisabeth, handing it back.
“And I ain’t asking you to. They’s mine. Picked free as God’s bounty. Eat,” said Nandy.
Elisabeth bit into the quince, puckering and savoring the crunch. It tasted tart, and harder than an apple, but delicious.
“That the way they is. Got a tang a lemon,” said Nandy, biting into one.
The two women ate, sizing each other up with the branches overhead protecting them from the growing heat. A Steller’s jay landed on the quince sack, screeching. It pounced around, pulling on the cotton fabric, bold and stubborn, while Nandy looked on.
A few black ants crawled onto Elisabeth’s boot, and she flicked them away.
“They ain’t gonna hurt you,” said Nandy.
“I hate ants,” she said.
“Them ants is so dumb they walk in a line one after the other, not thinking where they’s going. One of ’em gets off track, the others follow till they all lost. Now them Stellers is smart as all. Always remembering where my store’s at. Them little bird brains hold more than you’d ’spect,” she said, tapping her temple with a finger. “But they’s greedy buggers, too, stealing. Taking more than a fair share.”
Nandy shooed a flat hand at the bird. The jay didn’t fly off but held its ground, cocking his head with a dark blue Mohawk flopping and beady eyes peering. Suddenly, Nandy lurched forward, waving both arms big and powerful, squawking like a mama bird. The jay fled up to a twisty branch but kept screeching down.
Prospects of a Woman Page 4