The Memory Weaver Read online

  She was in the white children’s school with me, taught by Mr. Rogers, and together we attended the Sunday school class taught by Mrs. Whitman. A tiny woman, sweet as honey with hair the same color. She began each fall class of Sunday school with the Twenty-Third Psalm, and I wished that Mrs. Whitman and dear Nancy had been with me during the hostage time, as we could have recited together “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” We were all in the valley of the shadow of death but in different places that November day of 1847. No one who wasn’t a part of that terror really understands the nightmares or the moments of searing loss that return unexpected. I think now they are memories of our powerlessness and betrayal, when our world went from being safe and protected and adventurous to the day we began wearing fear and uncertainty like a too-heavy cloak. To take it off exposed us to a fearsome vulnerability, but wearing that cloak slowed us, kept us from moving forward into a life God planned for us.

  Nancy and I lost touch after that terrible November. The Osbornes escaped after spending a perilous night under the floor at the Whitman mission, breathing shallow as a bat so that the Cayuse stomping over their heads, all full of blood lust from their killings, didn’t find them huddling there. Mrs. Osborne had the measles with a terrible fever, and a week or so before they’d buried their baby who died of that disease. But her illness was the only reason they had been close enough to that safe room with time for Mr. Osborne to pull the boards up and shove his family and himself under to safety.

  It seemed a miracle that her family appeared in South Brownsville not long after we did, attending my father’s church. Her father occupied half the bench in our little congregation and he’d snore and fall off the backless seat, making a racket. No one uttered a word, as my father insisted on absolute attention and a strict code of silence but for his words that often pelted me like hail. I confess I did not hear much of what he spoke of. I had no fear of hell, really. I’d already been there. And some days I wasn’t certain but that I lingered at that gate again.

  The real secret Nancy and I shared was in how we tried to resolve the nightmares and anxieties, which we did that spring day after her rituals and our winding the yarn into balls. “If you weren’t there, there isn’t much another can really tell us about what to do, isn’t that right, Eliza?”

  “Absolutely. Mama used to tell me that we did the best we could, that the Lord looked out for us, but I still wonder why he didn’t look out for the others. I mean, what did we do that we deserved to live when they didn’t?”

  We sat in that main room of our log home pondering that question that seemed as tangled in my mind as the knitting yarn could get. I noted a hole in the chinking between the logs and told myself to remember to tell Father. Or likely attend to it myself. He took any mention by me of a household need as a criticism of himself.

  “Did you want to go to the trial?” Nancy posed the question. My answer was interrupted by my sister needing her knee looked at. Millie bounded to me, trusting I would do my best to make her feel better.

  “I fell.”

  “So I see.” I dabbed at the wound with my apron edge. “What were you doing exactly?”

  “A . . . a rabbit came by and Yaka chased it and I ran after it through the garden and stumbled at the rocks you put there to mark it. I’m sorry. Rabbits don’t notice fences.”

  “Apparently you don’t either.”

  “Are you mad at me, ’Liza?”

  “No, of course not.” I sounded cross but it wasn’t at my sister: it was at myself, that I’d failed to imagine that anyone might stumble on the rocks I’d carefully lined up to mark the perimeter of the garden, hoping to keep the grasses from encroaching. Lacking a spiderweb to put across the wound, I poured a splotch of my father’s elixirs to clean and stop the bleeding.

  “Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!” She danced from foot to foot.

  “I’m sorry it has to hurt to feel better.” I kissed her knee above the cleaned wound and she was off on another adventure.

  I fixed tea for Nancy, watched her center my mother’s ironstone cup on the saucer, didn’t answer her question about the trial, didn’t comment on her orderly ways. Changing the subject always proved a good way to avoid uncomfortable things. I did that instead.

  “Did you notice? I didn’t get upset over Amelia’s bloody wound.”

  “Now that you say that, I do. Maybe one day we’ll be normal again.”

  It was a hope, though without my mother to model wisdom in uncertain times, I wasn’t sure I’d recognize what healing really was.

  Later that day, feeling braver after Nancy left, I went in search of my mother’s wisdom inside those missing diaries. I thought she might speak to me from beyond the grave, bring me comfort if I saw some similarity in how we faced our days. So like a mouse sneaking beside a sleeping cat, I secreted my way scratching through my father’s things—their things in a trunk stowed in the barn loft. An old leather pouch he once carried gave up nothing but its scent. I moved aside a stack of clothing of my mother’s with her lavender scent still wisping in the folds. A tattered wool jacket rolled against the side. Cedar bark chips fell out when I lifted it up. My father might have worn it when they wed. No, at her funeral. I heard the horse stomp below me in its stall. Listened for my father’s or siblings’ footsteps. All was quiet. But still, no diaries. Were they left behind in Lapwai? I found books, lots of books, including one I remembered my mother reading to me. Fables for My ABC Book. Then my hand touched a velvet bag and I thought at first it was a neck collar with a gold clasp on it. I reached inside and there it was: my mother’s wedding ring. I fingered it, imagined her wearing it. I couldn’t hold back the tears.

  Time drifted and I knew I must put things back before my father returned. I wiped my face with my apron, slipped the ring on a leather twine, and tucked it around my neck like a hidden necklace beneath the blouse I wore. He would never see it and he wouldn’t marry without it, I was certain. I stepped over the small shame I carried with it as I put things back into the trunk.

  Nancy had wondered aloud one day why she often did things she later felt so sorry for, things she couldn’t seem to keep herself from doing. I pressed the ring beneath my chemise and changed the subject.

  5

  Sacrifices

  My father was a bear the next evening just before I put potatoes, venison jerky, and spring greens on the table. “Where is it? Who intruded into my trunk?”

  “Henry! Did you take your mother’s ring?”

  “I didn’t. No, sir. I didn’t.” My brother shook as Father stood over him, a Goliath to a failed David. The look on his face ought to have told my father that he didn’t do it.

  My sisters huddled in the corner, Millie with her thumb in her mouth, a habit given up long before, I’d thought. My own heart pounded like the butter churn.

  “How could you, Henry Hart?” I stepped between my brother and my father as he raised his fist against my brother. “Now I won’t have it when I marry.”

  My father turned me toward him, his fingers digging into my shoulder. “You’re worried about your marriage? That’s of no merit.” He pushed me aside. “Who among my children, my very own flesh and blood, has stolen from me?”

  “Maybe someone else took it. People do come and go here,” I reminded him.

  “Henry Hart! Do you confess?”

  Why didn’t my father accuse me? It was as though he knew but wasn’t sure what he’d do with me if he found the truth. I think he thought me fragile. And yet I wanted him to accuse me, I’m not sure why. Maybe to recognize that I existed outside of the aftermath of loss. Nor was I only his helper.

  “You will go to bed without supper for a week, Henry, or until you confess. Do you understand, boy?”

  “I didn’t take it, Papa, I didn’t.” Tears welled up in his eyes. Shame clouded mine.

  “Go!”

  And I let my brother climb the ladder to the loft and
take the blame.

  There’d been no confession, of course. And a week later, mid-May, Father told us he had to travel to Fort Vancouver on business, a journey of five days. He left and Henry was reprieved from his lack of supper. He scowled at me.

  “What?” I said.

  “You took it.”

  “I saved you from being beaten,” I reminded him. “He was going to hit you.”

  “But I didn’t take the ring. You did. Slipping me food each night doesn’t make up for your lie, Sister. You took it.”

  “I did.”

  “I knew it!” He slammed his palm on the table. “Why didn’t you say?”

  “Because as long as he has no ring, he won’t remarry.”

  My brother blinked and stepped back. “Remarry? He’d never do that. Mama’s only been gone two years. You should tell him. Still, it was wrong of you to let me take the blame.” He pouted, his lower lip pooching out, his fingers circling a wood knot in the table.

  “Men tend to need wives.” I ignored the truth of his statement. “They put away pain that way, I suppose. If I’m widowed, I’ll never remarry.”

  “Who would marry you anyway? Not that Warren.”

  “You might be surprised.”

  “I wonder what business Father has at Fort Vancouver.”

  “He didn’t say. Do you want to eat at the table with us tonight?”

  “I guess.”

  I was grateful we’d crossed an impasse, changed the subject. I loved my brother, but to my shame, I was willing to sacrifice him to hold near my heart something precious from my mother and to degrade myself to do it.

  Four days later my father’s “business” stood beside him in our house. Rachel Johonet “Jane” Smith arrived in May 1853, barely two years after my mother’s death. She came around the Horn, as they say, by ship, looking like a woman at once elegant by her posture and choice of hat and dress—and yet frumpy, with stitching pulled out across her wide girth and the feather on her hat leaning over her forehead. When she let out her breath, the feather lifted and then settled. She gripped the arm of my father.

  “Meet Rachel, your new mother. We married at Forest Grove.”

  I stared, then finding my voice corrected, “That would be stepmother.” When had this courtship ensued?

  “Welcome.” My brother, as always, spoke the right word.

  Apparently one of those long foolscap letters my father sent off wasn’t to the Foreign Mission Board but to Rachel in Boston, asking for marriage. My father filled us in, chattering like a schoolboy. She’d been a teacher. Did he imagine she’d be one like my mother was: gifted, a facility with languages seldom equaled, a creative artist? I was glad I had her ring even though it didn’t stop this . . . this defacement of my mother’s memory.

  “She’s come to tend my home.” He smiled at her. “So you can have more time to study, Eliza. I’ve done this for you and the children more than for me—though every man needs a woman to walk beside him. And I must say I am chagrined to have misplaced your mother’s wedding ring.” He glared at Henry. I waited to see if Henry would expose me but he didn’t. “Rachel has graciously accepted that there is no ring,” Father continued. “At least until I find it . . .” His eyes scanned us. “Or can afford another.”

  “My name is Rachel Johonet Jane Smith. Well, I guess Spalding too. But you may call me Mother if you wish.” Her voice was clear as a mountain stream. I wanted to muddy it.

  “And if I don’t wish?”

  “Eliza. Don’t be rude.”

  Rachel pressed her gloved hands on my father’s arm as she turned to him. “No, no, that’s fine. I appreciate a child who speaks her mind.” That won her one check for good with me. “Then Rachel would be preferable. I do understand your reluctance.”

  She had kind words for each child, noting Millie’s new front teeth and Martha’s arched brows. Henry, nearly as tall as Rachel, nodded formally to her. To me Rachel said, “Your father speaks so highly of you, Eliza, of such a helpmate you’ve been to him. And of your . . . tragedy. I’m so sorry.”

  “There’s no need for you to be sorry,” I said. “You had nothing to do with it.”

  My father cleared his throat. “Good, good. Let’s get settled in then, shall we, Rachel, dear?” He lifted the carpetbag he’d carried, pausing to walk with it to his bed . . . their bed.

  Her eyes gazed around our simple home and I saw it as she did: a plank table with two benches on either side and one chair at the end. My father’s. The rocking chair on the rag rug I’d made. Our beds were stuffed with bedstraw, a plant that grew beside the river in the moist areas. Henry and I slept in the loft; the little girls on mats nearest my father’s bed. Rachel pushed down on that pad with a flattened hand. “It feels so . . . different.”

  “You’re accustomed to feather ticks, I suspect.” This, from my father. “We have fewer amenities here. I tried to explain the conditions to you, Rachel.” She’d arched her eyebrow. “Mrs. Spalding.” His correction brought a smile to her wide face.

  “Something to order then. A person’s sleep is paramount to good health. Godey’s Lady’s Magazine affirms it. I’ll be subscribing to that, as well. The magazine is excellent training material for young girls. I’m sure you’ll like it.” She smiled at Martha, who curtsied. I’d never seen my sister curtsy nor grin as huge as the one she gave Rachel when the woman lifted Martha’s chin in her gloved hands and whispered, “Such beautiful features.”

  “My mother corresponded with the editor of Godey’s,” I said. “We have copies here.”

  “Did she, now? How glorious for you all.”

  “Just old ones,” Martha said. “Old copies.”

  “Well, my, that’s unexpected. And excellent.” She removed her yellow gloves. Both dress and gloves had brown accent piping. Her crinolines swirled as she surveyed beyond our faces and filled the small space further. “A quilt will form as a divider until we can add a room for the children’s beds, don’t you think, Henry?” My brother opened his mouth. “I don’t think I can . . .” then closed it. We’d never heard a woman call my father “Henry.” He’d always been “Mr. S” from my mother and “Reverend Spalding” or “Postmaster” from other men and women in our town. Or Father.

  “He didn’t know to whom you were speaking.” My father expressed an awkward chuckle. “We call him Henry Hart. His mother’s maiden name.”

  “You’ll be plain Henry then, Husband,” Rachel clarified. “That way there’ll be no confusion. Isn’t that right, Henry Hart? And we’ll keep your mother’s name. Ever in our presence. Henry Hart. That’s lovely.”

  She won another point from me as my father nodded. He certainly couldn’t be besotted with her, could he? It was a marriage of convenience, and at that moment I found myself less troubled by her presence than by the surprise of it, that I had failed to see any signs. Still, it would be good to have an extra hand at fixing meals, making soap and candles, carrying water buckets, milking cows, weeding the garden, drying fish and berries, letting out the hems of little dresses. I might even have more time with Mr. Warren. Despite the trepidations, the possibilities suddenly sounded delicious.

  “Now then, let’s rustle up some grub.” My father used a phrase I’d only heard spoken by men tending sheep back at our mission in Lapwai. He rubbed his hands together too, a gesture foreign to him. He acted . . . giddy.

  Five pairs of eyes turned to Rachel Johonet Jane Smith Spalding.

  Her blue eyes wide, her mouth a perfect O, she said, “Surely you don’t expect me . . . ?”

  After a moment’s pause, my father spoke. “No. Of course not. You’ve traveled far today and must be tired. Eliza, please prepare our supper.”

  I turned toward the cupboard where we kept the flour, soda, salt, and blackberry syrup to stir up syrup bread.

  “Dear Henry. Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t my dear brother-in-law explain?” Rachel removed the hat pins while she spoke. “I don’t cook. I’m a professional woman. I’ve never even
boiled an egg.”

  The Diary of Eliza Spalding

  1850

  I am ill now, not even able to be up and boil eggs for my children. Henry Hart prepares them as Mr. S and Eliza spend time and money in Oregon City at the trial. I hear the chatter of my children being nurtured in the kitchen.

  Today I found a letter to my brother Horace among his things stored here in Brownsville. In March 1846 I had written to him:

  “I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day; Greatly desiring to see thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may be filled with joy.” Paul writes these words to Timothy and me to you, my dear brother Horace. I thank you for sending me the message of our father’s death. He was a good man, though how I wish he had found his way to the Lord’s blessings. But we cannot know these things. At the last moment, my prayers for him may have been answered and I will see him again in a better place. I pray too that our dear mother awaits him with open arms and that one day you will be there with my sisters and all of us as well.

  It is of great joy that you will come west and bring my inheritance such as it is. Our father had said quite clearly that upon his death I must return to New York to secure my land as my siblings acquired, which is of course impossible. Even though things are more settled than in ’42 with Mr. S no longer being considered for dismissal, we lack both funds and the will to make such a lengthy trip, and heaven knows what would happen to our work here in our absence. Your plans to come by ship to Vancouver are wise. Send us word upon your departure and we will prepare to bring you here from the Fort at Vancouver. If you can make your way to Fort Walla Walla, that would mean a much less arduous trip for Mr. S to meet you and bring you to our Lapwai mission. What a joy it will be to hold you again, dear brother. My regards please to my sisters whom I hold in my heart.