A Mending at the Edge: A Novel (Change And Cherish) Read online

  “Even though we’re widowed,” I said kindly, “We’re still missus or, in my language, a Frau.”

  She turned away from me. “I wish I were a widow,” she whispered. “It would be better than what I am.”

  Transplanting

  August. Too much happening to write often here. I’m busy doing.

  Almira walked back with us to the dance hall. My fingers did their rubbing, announcing I was nervous. Well, I’d invited a woman I didn’t know and who had a certain challenge in her voice to spend the evening with us. It might have been impulsive, but I saw it as an act of kindness. She needed something, and I’d heard this inner speaking that quieted when I extended my invitation. Compassion and food were all I had to offer. The provision of safe harbor must come first, before one can accept that others mean kindness. Ida’s genuine offer of care must have given her hope.

  We walked past rhododendrons, plants I’d seen bloom in the spring on my side hill near the Pudding, shadowed by tall trees. Someone in Salem had transplanted them to grow beside their porch steps, so they looked like tamed plants, ones that had always belonged there, rather than wild.

  “Those plants give off such showy blooms in springtime,” Almira said. “I didn’t realize they could be taken from the forest and would still grow.”

  “It’s surprising what can be transplanted,” I said. I saw it as a hopeful sign that she noticed. When I was at my lowest, I couldn’t pay attention to anything lovely; my mind trotted like a dog in frustrating circles.

  “That could be said of more than just plants,” she said. “Though one wonders if the second soil is really ever as good for it as the first.”

  “It’s different, I’ve found, but not necessarily bad.” Ida held the woman’s hand as we walked, and I thought Almira flinched when my daughter first touched her, but she held Ida’s fingers lightly, obviously wanting to please the child. Still, her hands must hurt, the knuckles were so red.

  “Your daughter reminds me of my Annie,” Almira said. Her eyes watered again.

  Something made me tell her that I had left Willapa under difficult circumstances. “I’ve transplanted myself in a new place, Mrs. Raymond. Or been transplanted, I’ve never been certain.”

  “Please. Use my Christian name, Almira. I’m not…well, I’m not married,” she whispered. She wiped at the wetness pressed out of those gray eyes. She had tiny brown spots on her cheeks and at her wrists, and when she spoke she sounded like the women from cities in eastern states. “So you’re alone here? With your girls?”

  “We’ve come from Aurora, the Christian colony east of here. I’m not alone anymore. I have two sons who stayed behind and friends to help. We’re here for a short time, while a few of our men build at the fairgrounds. At the colony, we all work as we can and contribute to the common good.” She frowned, but I thought it might be more of a squint against the sun. “Are you familiar with Christian ways?”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “Quite.”

  She spoke it as though it was the last thing she wanted to say on that subject.

  At the building site, I served her tea. She shook as she held the cup, and so I urged a biscuit on her and a slice of ham. She was very thin, wrists the width of Kate’s. My older daughter had gone off with a Schwader girl to oversee the dance hall progress, but Ida stuck by Almira’s side as though she’d discovered a forgotten boat and would need to keep her in tow.

  “You’re very kind,” Almira said. “I didn’t mean to impose, and I shan’t trouble you beyond this lovely supper. I feel stronger now.”

  “It’s hardly a supper,” I told her. “We’ll begin preparing that now, and if you’re up to it, we could use the extra assistance. You can see we’ve quite a crowd.”

  “I’d be pleased to,” she said. She rose, then lost her balance and drifted down the way a sheet does when unfurled onto a bed. She collapsed in a heap beside the wagon.

  Matilda and Kitty ran forward to assist me help her.

  “Is she sick? Who is she?”

  “She’s tired,” I said, hoping that was true. “Let her rest.”

  “I found her,” Ida told them. She pointed her finger in the air as though to dispute anyone’s claim. “She’s mine.”

  When the meal was complete, served, and consumed, the musicians revived themselves with music. We’d also brought taffy we’d pulled, with paraffin in it to keep it from melting in the August heat. The girls and Matilda and I had prepared stick candies before we left Aurora, and those we sold now for a penny, along with the taffy pieces. “We’re making money, hand over stick,” Kitty noted as she handed yet another young man the striped sweet. She’d fluttered her eyes at him as he’d taken the candy and turned back to the band.

  It stayed light until nearly ten o’clock on this summer night, but soon the music would end and the crowd disperse. They’d have to pay to hear the band at the fair, so this was a treat for them. Perhaps it added to our food sales, since they hadn’t parted with money for a ticket. The musicians improvised and joked with their audience.

  I heard a startled cry behind me. Almira awoke, looked around, her left hand rubbing the knuckles of her right. “I need to go,” she said. “I need to…” She looked around again, lost. She didn’t seem strong enough to consider leaving. As the crowd lessened, I told her, “You’re welcome to stay here with us. We sleep in the wagons. It’s not too uncomfortable, as you probably noted; but in the company of so many, we’re safe enough out here beneath the stars.” She shook her head no. “You’d be doing me a favor,” I said. “Ida will put up a fuss if you go now.”

  She hesitated and then said, “Perhaps, well, just for the night.” She removed her bonnet for the first time. She lay down again, and Ida snuggled in next to her, as if the child had found a large doll to claim as her own. Almira was separated from her family, but it appeared that tonight she’d found safety in ours.

  In the morning, the workmen put finishing touches on the dance hall door, placed the lock, and stood back to admire their work. In less than two months, we’d be back for the fair, and oh, what a grand time we’d have! I’d probably not be allowed to come back to help with provisions, though the nearly twenty dollars we’d raised in these few days would say much about the market for our German delicacies in Salem.

  Almira hadn’t moved all night, though I’d heard her call out twice as if in a bad dream. She still lay flat on her back, hands across her chest, casket ready should she expire in the night. Ida had wriggled and wiggled her way, so that she slept now with her head closer to Almira’s knees than her face. I lifted her carefully from Almira’s side. The woman breathed so shallowly that I had to look twice to see if she did. Her bodice barely lifted. The stitching on her threadbare dress was finely done.

  I had one last thing to do before we headed back to Aurora. I told the men I’d be back in an hour or so. Matilda agreed to watch the girls. When I returned, Almira was awake. “I have a suggestion for you, Mrs. Raymond…I mean, Almira,” I said. “At the colony we have a doctor and another man who specializes in apothecary. Your hands might improve from Arnica montana. It’s this cream, but I know that sometimes mountain climbers eat the plant’s roots to ease their aches or help with bruises. I’m sure we can get—”

  “I don’t need medicines. Discomfort is what I deserve. And I have no funds.” She’d begun brushing at the thin calico and looked around as though to pick up her bag, but she had none.

  “But you can pay. By exchanging work. It’s how we do it in Aurora. We’re a communal society.”

  “Men take many wives there,” she said, throwing her shoulders back in strait-laced disapproval. “Is that how I’d be asked to pay?”

  “Oh, no, no. In fact, our leader is more discouraging of marriage than not.”

  “That’s a certainty,” Matilda said. I looked at her, wondering if she’d say more, but she continued putting baskets back into the wagon.

  “And certainly only one family per household is our goal, but w
e’re short of housing. People do stay with each other, but only until they can be moved into their own homes.”

  “You’d have room for me?”

  “We’d make room.”

  “I sometimes wake with nightmares. And my past…You might not be accepting of me if you knew.”

  “We all have secrets we’d not care to share,” I said. “The book of The Acts marks our lives helping each other in wilderness places despite what we’ve done to end up there,” I said. I told her of the Diamond Rule. “It’s not up to us to condemn. I’m widowed, but I’m also separated from my second husband,” I said. “Yet I’m welcomed there.” I wondered if that was true, decided it was.

  “I’ve nothing to offer,” Almira said. “There’s no way I can make another’s life better than my own, not after what I’ve done.”

  Ida stood beside her and again reached for Almira’s reddened hands. “Maybe to begin with, you could look after my children. I have two boys at home too,” I said, “so while I’m cooking at the Pioneer Hotel, that would help. Ida has a leavings doll I’ve made her from the leftover scraps, but it’s not enough some days to entertain her.”

  Now some could say that asking a stranger to look after the lives of the most precious suggests questionable judgment on my part, but there was something about Almira that didn’t worry me. Ida had accepted her immediately. And she didn’t look like the kind of woman who would have nine children without being married. She might have been divorced, but those were rare indeed in the region. Something different must have happened to Almira. She might be a strong-willed woman who was perceived as stubborn or contrary, with a husband who resented her strength. I could understand that.

  “Maybe for a time. Until my strength returns. And as long as I can contribute.” She paused before asking, “Will you have to ask Brother Keil’s permission to have me stay at your home?”

  “I don’t see why. I’m only following our Diamond Rule.”

  Matilda interjected then, “My brother says that Brother Keil sets the tone for everything. ‘He who provides the food gives the orders,’ he says.”

  I hadn’t thought of it that way—that food was the force that held families together or forced them to separate in search of it, but there was a truth to that. I’d heard stories of fathers saying to their adult children, “So long as you put your feet under my table, you’ll follow my rules.” That must be what they meant. My father might have said that to me if I’d moved in with them.

  “She’ll be taking care of my girls so that I can work at the hotel or do my seamstress work,” I said. “That way she’s contributing, and so am I. You arrive at a fortuitous time,” I told Almira, feeling awkward talking about her with Matilda when she stood right there. “We’ll be building a great deal, have more people now to feed and clothe. And your arrival helps me personally. I’ll let Brother Keil know that.” I wondered whether to tell Matilda the rest of it, then decided to go ahead. “I’ll need to work extra now, to pay off my instruction fee anyway.”

  Matilda looked at me.

  “I signed up to take an art course at the university,” I said. “And I didn’t ask Brother Keil’s permission for that either.”

  I walked behind the others on the way back to Aurora. It gave me time to think. Keil would consider it frivolous and yet…as prayerful words took us through to God, why couldn’t paintings take us to God’s presence? Karl had told me once that there were those who said Saint Luke had not only been a physician but a painter too, an artist who painted portraits not of God, of course, but of God incarnate, God on earth: portraits of the living Christ.

  I had forgotten Karl’s telling me that until I stepped into that classroom the second time. Miss Jordan was teaching another class. They were painting human forms, but landscape scenes and still-life paintings formed a border around the outside edge of the classroom, a halo around the work the women painted. In the center was an iconic painting done on wood. It showed the Virgin Mary holding her Son as an infant to her face, her right hand clutching Him close while her left hand reached out as though seeking. I’d seen pictures of this before in books, but seeing it there among the other paintings brought tears to my eyes.

  Paintings were ways through, the way music was, the way the parables were, the way I sometimes felt when I stitched and worked my fingers to create new fabric forms. I wanted to paint one of those icons to have in my own home, one I could sit before and calm my muddling mind into prayer. It was that hope which had propelled me to take such a drastic move as registering for the course. I hadn’t paid for it yet. But I would find a way. My hope was that the agreement signed by Keil and me, permitting all of my family to be educated, would include me. I’d paint, sell the paintings, and use the money to make repayment for the course. Maybe I’d have enough left to put toward Andy’s schooling too.

  The beginners’ course was taught for a week at a time, once a month for three months. I’d have to make arrangements for the children, trust that my work at the hotel wouldn’t be missed, and get Keil to agree that this course was in service to the colony. It could be a difficult sell.

  I pitched that thought away.

  Maybe the pieces could help decorate the church. The craftsmen would be working on the altar. Perhaps some color would be welcomed on the church walls. Meanwhile, an iconic painting could offer comfort to those in need, like Almira. She’d become very important to me. This must have been how Christian felt when he’d brought someone into our fold. Christopher Wolff had been recruited by Christian. So had Karl Ruge. Both men brought goodness to us all through their artistries, their intellect, and their service. I anticipated that Almira was only the first of many who would bring goodness to us all, and I was now a part of that.

  “You’re so brave, Emma,” Matilda said as she stepped back to walk with me.

  I laughed at that. “Brave? Nein. Foolish maybe, or a coward. I’m afraid of doing everything the same each day. I’m more afraid of dying before I’ve found out why I’m here than I’m scared of rubbing Brother Keil the wrong way. I’m not going to change the world, the way I once thought Christian and I might. But little things each day can make a difference. Besides, Keil ebbs and flows like the ocean. I’ll catch him when the tide is out.”

  “Does he? He seems so…stern to me.”

  I’d forget at times that those newer arrivals from Bethel had been without Keil’s physical presence for nearly ten years. He was almost a legend to many of them, until they faced him here. They’d gone on without him, making decisions, living their lives. It must have been difficult after all that time to find themselves somehow subservient to him, this man who wasn’t any kind of god at all; a man who picked his teeth of meat, just as we all did.

  “Sometimes he’s willing to bestow goodness on us; sometimes he withholds. I never know which it’ll be, so I may as well do what I think I ought to and hope I can convince him later if something strikes him wrong. It took me a while to get my house, but I got it. Even the stove, though I’ll be some time paying for that!”

  “I heard Barbara White Giesy say that was quite an extravagance.”

  “She would,” I said. “But I’ll bake good things for the colony, so I’ll be giving back. And I didn’t ask Keil for permission, and when it arrived he didn’t tell me that I couldn’t keep it. I’m sure he knew it was delivered. Sometimes we just do what we think we must.”

  “Well…,” she said.

  I waited for her to tell me more, and when she didn’t I brazenly asked, “So what is it that you think he’ll deny you?”

  She blushed and shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing.”

  It was late when we arrived back at Aurora, but I didn’t feel tired or restless. Stars were beginning to pop out of their dark closets, so I expected to see lamplight from my house. I didn’t. I didn’t think the boys would be in bed yet. It was summer and the air still warm, and playing outdoors was something they both loved to do. I set the lamp I carried on the tabl
e in the kitchen and walked to the back porch. No one was there except Opal, who bleated me her welcome. We’d built a pen for her, and she put her feet up on the railing. “Later,” I told her. “I’ll scratch your head later.” The chickens had been put in for the night.

  Both Kitty and Matilda had planned to spend the night with the Schwaders in their log home, but since it was late, I invited them both to stay with me. With Almira, they waited inside. Kitty lit the kitchen lantern so when I came back in, it was to a warm light.

  “Where are the boys?” Kitty asked.

  “I suppose they’re still with Martin.” I gathered up quilts for Almira and Matilda and Kitty and settled them in the parlor. “You’re my first real guests,” I said. It was too warm for a fire. That was probably why the kindling I’d placed there before we left hadn’t been burned. Perhaps they’d eaten elsewhere so they didn’t have to bother cleaning my dishes. “They’ll be here before long.”

  I got the girls ready for bed and tucked them in upstairs. Ida tried to convince me to let her sleep beside Almira again, but I assured her she’d be there in the morning. She listened to me and fell fast asleep.

  I came down the stairs and went through the kitchen out to the front porch, so I didn’t have to bother the women sleeping inside. I sat there on my father’s blue bench and waited for my sons to come home.

  No need to be worried, I decided. I was adaptable. I knew that circumstances sometimes intervened to break up well-laid plans. Martin must have decided it was easier to sleep at Keils’ with the boys than to prepare meals and whatnot for them in my home. I could understand that, in a way. Men didn’t much like to cook a meal, and even though it would only have been mush for breakfast, something Andy could have fixed for them all, Martin was probably accustomed to a big bacon-and-egg breakfast that he’d find at the Keils’. Or for all I knew, they were fixing breakfasts for all the workmen building the church. I’d find out in the morning, I decided. I came inside, ran my fingers across the iron stove, blew out the kitchen lights, then carried my candle upstairs, well after what must have been midnight. I heard Opal bleat in the night and felt nearly as forlorn as her cry.