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

  “I hope her brother doesn’t find out his mother still has that butter plate,” Christine said.

  “Food is the elixir for grief,” I said. “That’s something we know, ja?”

  “But it’s not all that fills us up.”

  I echoed Karl and made her laugh when I said, “Ja, by goodness, that’s right.”

  I washed the girls’ hair on Saturday before the Christmas gathering began. I wondered if this schedule of limited worship was Keil’s way of being sure we didn’t get caught up in ritual. If he’d done it to halt our house church, that hadn’t worked. We still met, and we worshiped as we worked. And on the off Sundays, when the church was empty, I often went there in the mornings myself and would find Helena there, sometimes Karl Ruge, or others of the colony worshiping. Maybe that’s Keil’s intention after all, that we worship on our own without a named leader. Certainly no one was really being groomed to replace him, except for the advisors. But I’d never known a church to be run by a group without a named leader.

  Despite the kindling in the kitchen stove, the room felt damp and cool with all of us having our hair washed. We heated the water in big copper pots on the stove, had the girls lean over another blue washtub, and poured the water over their hair first. We collected the wastewater and would reuse it for the next head of hair. Kitty scrubbed with our soap; Christine rinsed, keeping fresh water heated. I dried Ida’s hair, rubbing her curly strands between the flannel towels before continuing the routine with Kate, who was young woman enough she could do it on her own. But I liked the ritual as much as she seemed to. After all of us had wet hair and were hoping it would dry before it froze and broke off, someone rubbed our heads as dry as they could, and we’d begin running the comb through our tangles, making the best of the sometimes tearful pulls against our scalps. Kitty introduced another round to sing that acted as distraction.

  I did like this time together. I inhaled the aroma of the soap and hair rinse, which didn’t really seem to help with tangles all that much but did make our hair smell grand. I liked knowing that simple water and soap would make another feel good, and that my children and sisters had clean and mended clothes to put on later. It comforted me knowing we had wood enough for the winter, stacked up beside the wash house, and that both Po and Opal were happy inside it during cold nights like tonight. Ja, I’d brought Clara into a cage at night so she could be safe inside too. Our flock of colony chickens had their roost house to stay warm in. We women had boots to wear and gloves with sheep’s wool lining and knitted hats to go over our wet hair. We’d be lucky if the long strands dried by morning, tucked inside braids. Still, it was a satisfying time. Kitty’s music made it almost a time of worship.

  We’d all go to the dance at the Park House later that evening. Some children would swirl with their fathers; women would chatter and talk, the older ones bringing their stitching to sit on the side, the younger ones eyeing the bachelors with hopefulness in their hearts. There were still so few marriages. People from the Shaker community in the East had visited us last summer, and they felt celibacy had great merit. But after they left, I heard one of the advisors say he was glad to see they’d gone. “They never laughed or smiled and were plain as white cows. A few frills never hurt anyone.”

  The Pie and Beer Band was frills. They might play that night (being paid in pie and beer), or sometimes the Aurora Band if they weren’t engaged for money by a noncolonist group somewhere else. Both Ida and Kate loved to attend the dances. Often they’d see their brothers there, which was always the highlight for me too.

  I’d been unable to convince Brita to return with us, but she agreed to give me her address and promised to write back. I wondered if there was something yet I could do to bring her boys to her.

  On a dance night, back when Jacob and Matilda still lived with us, Jacob would make sure we all had our gloves on and knitted mufflers at our necks and heads before stepping out into the night. The sound of a man’s voice could soothe, and I missed that. A once happily married woman never forgot the pleasure of hearing a man’s voice say her name. She never forgot the pleasure of a lover’s touch to her lips either, but that was something I could do little about. I’d have to content myself with having my brothers come to dinner more often, to hear their voices and feel the brush of beard on my cheeks.

  We five females made our way through the light-falling snow the quarter mile or so, up toward the Keils’ and then through the trees to the Park House. We reminded one another to carry our lanterns high. My hair still felt wet as we walked, and I wondered what would happen if I cut it short so it could dry overnight in the winter. That would raise some eyebrows. It probably wasn’t worth the upset it would cause, though I noticed any number of girls and women now wore their hair straight back, or with braids at the sides and not just parted down the center. There’d been clicking of tongues when I’d first changed my hairstyle to pin my braids in circles above my ears. As a young wife, I’d found it amusing to introduce such an insignificant onion into the colony stew.

  Christine got asked to dance almost as soon as we came through the door. My parents had come that evening, and as I greeted them, I saw that Louisa and Johanna were there too. While I feared it might happen, Louisa never had one quaking episode. Like Christine, she was asked to dance and did so, despite Johanna’s frown when her sister took the gentleman’s hand and began gliding around the floor. I looked around for Andrew and Christian. Both boys were standing with others, the Ehlen children and a Will boy. I watched my older son move over toward Rosina Stauffer, who had Jacob and Matilda’s baby in her arms. He peered into the blanket, looked up at the baby’s aunt, and said something that made her laugh. He’d been there for the delivery. He’d had to witness death and life within the same scene at such an early age. It was part of a doctor’s life, I supposed, and Andrew had come to it early. His interest in medicine would stick. Martin had nurtured it well.

  I took a cup of hot cider. Martin Giesy talked quietly with Martha Miller. Did I see something pass between them? No one had asked me to dance, and that suited me fine. I was one of the ineligible women who wasn’t interested in romantic love and assumed I never would be again. I’d had my one great love. Family and friendship warmed me now. Karl might say it was philos love, the word the Greeks used to describe friendship and sisterhood. Once, I felt isolated even in the midst of a crowd, but not now. Perhaps taking in this kind of love was necessary to work our way through that bewilderment of living, the uncertainties of seeking through murky water. One needed time to mend and stitch together a life that gathered friendships and that other kind of Greek love, agape, a selfless love where one gives without expecting anything in return. A spiritual love. A mother’s love.

  “Would you care to dance?” It was my father.

  “It’s a Schottische,” I said. “We need three.”

  “I’ve already cornered Andy,” my father said, motioning for my older son to join us. He still calls him as a child, ‘Andy’ instead of ‘Andrew.’ Maybe a mother can call him that but still let him grow into a young man too. I took a deep breath. “And Christian’s been commandeered by his sisters. Ida’s been dogging him all evening, so we Wagners will take the floor together.”

  We wove our way through the hops and skips and arm circles while the band played the slow waltz tune. It had been years since I’d danced with my father…maybe at my wedding. Yes, we might have danced on that day. I smiled. And here was Andy on my other arm. He grinned. My mother and sisters clapped their hands in rhythm, and then William had our mother on one arm and Johanna on the other.

  What I needed was a way to continue the dance of my life, to take small steps that would keep me light on my feet and moving forward into meaning. Maybe whatever new spirit Christine had returned with I could discover without having to go through more misery to find it. I could still offer my home to the homeless. I could weave and make quilts, make peppermint candies and sell them, form shelves out of scrap wood. My appliqués h
eld promise. I cooked and served at the hotel. I could wash my girls’ hair, scent it with the finest herbs I could find, and give them and my mother and sisters time and the benefit of my experience, such as it was.

  My father and Andy swung me around. I sensed there was something more to do in my life, a new kind of yearning. I didn’t know what it was. For this evening at least, I’d live with that not knowing, trusting that like most emotions, it would not last forever.

  Christmas celebrations came and went. I always thought of Jack at those times, wondering if he’d travel to Aurora. He hadn’t. The girls at least had stopped asking if he’d be coming. Kate remembered him vaguely. When I saw the boys, neither mentioned their stepfather. I had a kind of settledness about Jack that took little from me now.

  The new year arrived to firecrackers, and in March, the Keil birthday celebrations took our time. I turned my almanac to a new year of my life and read with interest in the Oregonian that a woman, Fannie Case, planned to climb Mount Hood. The summer moved to its usual rhythm, and in August, Karl told me there was another article that said Fannie Case had done it, had climbed Mount Hood.

  “She’s a music teacher,” Karl told me. “Climbing that big mountain.” He shook his head in amazement. We stood outside the school-house. “I wonder what made her want to do that?”

  “The adventure of it,” I said. “Being in front.”

  “Ja. I know some women who like being first,” he said with teasing in his voice.

  “Now that I think of it, I bet there were Indian women who climbed it before she did,” I suggested. “We always forget about their firsts. I’ll ask the woman who brings us huckleberries and salmon to find out what the real story is.”

  “You were the first woman to come west for our colony,” Karl said.

  “Ja, no matter what happens, I will always have that.”

  On Christmas morning 1868, it came to me, my new Sehnsucht. I suspect it was the aroma of baked bread and the goose dressing and the pies I’d had in the oven since well before sunrise. Or it might have been Kate’s words, interrupting my humming as I worked.

  “Mama.” Kate put her arms around me while I bent to the oven. She was nearly thirteen and already as tall as I. “I will always remember you best in the kitchen.”

  “Will you? Why’s that?”

  “Because food mends everything, before I even know I need a stitch to tie me up.”

  I laughed. “Food and sewing. You’ve put those together in a funny way.” I turned to hold her to me, brushed the hair from her braid, tucking the loose strands back in. Her nightdress smelled of lavender, a scent I’d put into the soap. Her body was changing into a young woman’s.

  “Not sewing, Mama. Doing what Andy’s going to do. Mending people. That’s what you do too.”

  “Do I?”

  She nodded. “Almira’s hands were better when she left because of that cream you gave to her.”

  “Uncle Martin mixed that up for her,” I said.

  “But you asked him to do it. And Aunt Christine looked so different when she came back. Her eyes sparkle more. You did that for her, didn’t you, Mama? I saw you had a present for her when she left. It had magic in it. Foooood,” she said lengthening the middle of the word as though it was a song.

  “It wasn’t food, though.”

  “No? But food is best.” She grinned and motioned by lifting her eyebrows toward a cinnamon cake cooling on the table. “People who cook are good menders,” she said. “And people who clean are good workers. We need both, right, Mama? I’m a cleaner.”

  That much was true. When she was younger, she’d lose things; but since we’d been here in Aurora, she was the tidier of my two. Her eyes lifted to the cinnamon cake.

  “Ja, ja. You can have a slice, but just one. We save it for the gathering. We’re going to your Oma and Opa’s today. We need enough for Auntie Louisa and Johanna and William and Jonathan—”

  “They’re not aunties! Not William and Jonathan,” Ida said, coming into the room.

  “No, they aren’t. I meant we must save enough for everyone to have a taste.”

  “So they’ll come back for more?”

  “Ja,” I said. “Satisfaction is only for a time. People always want more.”

  I hugged her to me, gathered Ida up too. It was human nature to always want more. But it was also part of who we were, to desire being filled up, to be satisfied. People did that in different ways. I felt full when I walked the paths in prayer, when I painted, or when I cut those strips of fabric and formed them into shapes. Music filled me. Dancing gave me delight. But I felt most satisfied when I could listen to the stories people told me while I fed them, stories of their everyday but also of their hopes and dreams of someday. Even if I couldn’t fix what it was they wished for—I thought of Brita—I could always listen and I could serve sprinkling words of hope, like cinnamon, to bring out the flavor.

  That was my yearning, I decided, that seasoning I needed. And I thought I knew now what to do to achieve the sweetness that is promised in the proverb about desire. I just had to get Keil to agree.

  Restored to a Former State

  December 31. Today we prepared to celebrate the new year. My young Christian brought a goose for me to stuff. Mr. Ehlen took him to the river, and they brought the large fowl back through the heavier-than-usual snowfall. Imported turkeys sell for thirty dollars each in Portland, so he might have made good money selling rather than giving the bird away. I invited him and his brother to eat with us on the first of the new year, but they chose to eat with the Ehlens, and I could understand why. Teaching a boy to hunt was nothing I could do, and neither could Martin. So Mr. Ehlen filled that order with aplomb. Kate said she wished to visit her brothers and so headed there after our meal. But it might be more her interest in a certain Ehlen boy, Lorenz, that drew her early from our table.

  At the house church gathering in January 1869, I posed my idea. “What if the colony built a restaurant at the fairgrounds?” I suggested. “We have a dance hall, and that earns a fair penny. We have a hotel here that people love to come to, to eat our food, and the stage always stops for a meal. Why not build a place where people can sit and eat and enjoy a little rest while they’re at the fair?”

  “Build another building? Ach,” Helena said. “Already people write back to Bethel that they’re hardly in Aurora, they’re off doing band performances or building somewhere else. The crops need tending. We are farmers first here, and have always been. It worries me how we get so extended and distracted from our purposes.”

  “How do you know people are writing letters of complaint?” Louisa asked her.

  “Andrew, my brother back in Bethel, tells me. He says the Bauer boys are not happy here. He notes a number of confusions about land issues, both in Bethel and Aurora, and people don’t like that kind of bewilderment. This is a religious colony. That should be our foundation. Not all these other money ventures.”

  Louisa’s face looked blotchy and red. “The things my husband proposes help us pay for things we need here, so we can give to one another, Helena. I know you meant no criticism, but these ventures, as you call them, help us keep this a Christian community, able to meet the needs of so many. It helps pay for things like…church bells, among other things,” she said. “We couldn’t make a trade for those. We had to have cash.”

  “Ja, ja. So you say.”

  It sounded to me as though they’d had this conversation before.

  “What would you serve there, Emma?” BW asked. “Everything we serve at the hotel?”

  “Party foods,” I said. “‘Restaurant’ is a French word that means to ‘restore to a former state.’ We’d return people to a satisfied state. It means providing food for someone too, of course. But people come to the fair and want to be restored, to find something to distract them from their troubles or give them a way to walk through them in the weeks ahead.”

  “The way art can restore,” Kate said.

  “Or how o
ur stitching restores us,” Martha Miller said.

  They were moving from the fair. I brought them back. “Sore feet, late evenings, talking to strangers and friends at length can get their rhythms out of step when they’re at the fair. They don’t eat as well as they might, so they end up not feeling well and going home early. Maybe not even buying tickets for the concerts or other events. If we gave them a place to sit and served them sumptuous food, they’d be rested. Make them feel special. Food is love, and love is food,” I said, as cheerfully as I could. “We can show them that love, and they’ll remember where they received it and maybe come to the hotel for more after the fair is over.”

  “Maybe even join the colony.” Louisa sighed.

  “That seems presumptuous,” Helena said. “I doubt food would bring about conversions.”

  “But who’s to say that feeding people isn’t of the highest spiritual work a person can do?” I said it out loud, something I hadn’t realized I believed. “It’s what women have done since…the Garden of Eden.”

  “Let’s not discuss what happened as a result of that,” Helena chided.

  “We could have a Fourth of July event with special food we’d serve on that holiday. Or do a Thanksgiving Day at the fair,” Kitty said. “Or maybe a German American day with all German foods, nothing else.”

  “Why not a May Day event in October with a Maypole and everything as we do here?” Kitty said. “We could have a chorus singing while we served.”

  “That might compete with the band performances,” Louisa said. “We wouldn’t want that.”

  “But music while we work, people would love hearing that,” I said. “We could roast one of our beef in a large pit, bring our dried fruit, make dishes with all our own produce, and tell people they could purchase such things at the hotel. Not everyone who comes to the fair has even heard of Aurora. This way, they would.”