Something Worth Doing Page 8

  The truth, she told herself, was that she’d rather be teaching or writing, almost anything except laundry or other “domestic arts.” Her sisters were so much better at them than she was. Fanny could whip up a meal for a dozen with hardly a second thought, even with her Eda’s runny nose and Lillian’s weepy eyes. “Something in the air bothers them,” Fanny had written in her latest letter. Maggie had two children as well, but her boat-house-store dodging in and out of ports on the coast was still as tidy as her quilt stitches. “Clean house, clean heart,” she said. “You only need what’s functional.”

  “I’ll decide later about the clutter,” Jenny had told Maggie. “The children don’t mind and the floors are clean. Cobwebs grow overnight. Can’t be helped. Spiders get free rides inside on the logs.”

  She supposed it was some small comfort knowing that all of her sisters—and women everywhere—were washing clothes on this day of the week as she was. Kate would be doing laundry too, but John had hired help for her, and it was only the two of them! Such a small basket of dirty clothes. Envy stuck out its tongue.

  Laundry was such a thankless task having to be done over and over. She’d told Harriet’s inventive husband that he ought to come up with some way to make laundry easier and not just spend his inventive mind on doodads like punched patterns in tin lanterns. She’d told Ben that too, and he’d said, as he often did to her suggestions, “I’ll think over it.”

  When she wasn’t composing poems or articles while she spun wool or churned cream, she worried over money. Teaching had once given her currency to call her own. Ben listened to Jenny at least. He still thought though that men were entitled to hunt and fish and “jaw” and visit and offer undiminished hospitality as respite from their labor no matter the season nor their income. Women had no such hope to interrupt their daily demands. He didn’t always know how inventive she had to get to spread their cash or trade in ways that kept the family—and the many friends Ben brought around—fed.

  He let her save a little of her egg-and-butter money for her books, papers, and lead, and she had proposed they buy a small house in town where they might spend winter months so the children could attend school. “A man should be responsible for financial matters,” he’d said, but he went along with the Lafayette house purchase. “It’s how we look after our women, protect you.” But what of those men as she imagined Mr. Bunter was? Who protects those wives? And widows? A woman needed control over her income, but laws would have to be remade to make that so. And men made all the laws. How would that ever change?

  Her hands were chapped by the harsh lye soap she used to launder clothes. Jenny prayed while she folded the “underlings,” as her mother had called the unmentionables. She wished she could find peace in the everyday work instead of resentment of its daily-ness, its weekly-ness, its constant-ness. The domestic arts did not make her thrive. Instead, they were bars on a window women had to look through to accomplish anything. She stood and pressed both hands on her lower back. She’d need to stop and prepare a noon meal for Ben and his helpers. She walked toward the house, checking the line to see if those clothes were dry enough to remove and she could prepare to hang up others after the cleanup from the noon break. She felt a trickle between her legs. She still bled, especially on Mondays.

  Jenny finished the laundry as the day waned, bringing evening cooling. She rested her body on a bench Ben had built outside the laundry cottage. Clara’s clear voice belted out the alphabet song to Willis, who tried the same but babbled an up-and-down rhythm instead. “Clara, you have your daddy’s voice, and poor Willis, you got mine.”

  Why she pondered women’s labor so much, she wasn’t certain, but women spent so much time in work, praying for ease. Except for childbirth, she’d had no time to lie and rest. There was always something more to do. She had written that ode to the broom, singing its praises as a sign of what women were—laborers in the never-ending fields.

  “A woman should get paid for her housework.” She said it out loud to Ben.

  “How would that work?” Ben asked. He settled on the bench beside her.

  “If her husband paid her, she could hire others who liked to sweep and clean and tend, women who did that well. And she could do what she was called to. That would allow a woman to take on work more meaningful to her, like asking questions. Why couldn’t a woman make her way doing what she liked to do as much as a man? Why shouldn’t she get land in her own name even without a husband? The Farmer’s Wife might need to take on that subject.”

  “I hope it doesn’t become too obvious who the Farmer’s Wife is, Jenny.”

  She turned to him. “Does that worry you?” She didn’t want to make his life complicated nor somehow tarnish the Duniway name.

  He was thoughtful. “I suppose not. Must be a sign of a wise farmer if he can allow his wife to speak her mind. At least you’re not up on some stage like I hear those Eastern women sometimes do.”

  “Yes, public speaking is the realm of men. My father always says that.” She watched the sunset turn the world a rosy hue. “But something might be so important that it would be worth risking a woman’s reputation to speak her voice in public, as a man can, don’t you think?”

  Ben sat silent. “I’ll think over it.”

  TEN

  Life, Death, and What Is Sure

  1858

  _______

  They’d endured more than celebrated the Christmas holidays. Her niece, the sickly Eda, had passed. For Jenny, the very thought of the death of Clara or Willis caused such heartache that she sometimes couldn’t catch her breath. Her mother had grieved her firstborn, and then another son died when Jenny was eleven and the boy only one month old, followed by their sister Alice, born and died the same day, the autumn before they left Illinois. The work hadn’t stopped for her mother with any of those deaths, and it wouldn’t for Fanny either. But neighbors helped. Families brought food and talked softly while preparing Eda for burial, putting all the hopes and dreams for her gentled into the wooden casket that the Lafayette furniture maker crafted. There was nothing more forlorn, Jenny decided, than an empty child-size casket being brought into the house—except one holding a child when it was taken back out.

  It made Jenny want to grab up her two children and set them inside a fleece-lined basket and hold them there, prevent death from reaching its greedy fingers into their lives. But of course, living held risk, the very act of breathing meant another step into the unknown. How one took those steps would shape the character of those around you—Fanny’s other children, her husband, Amos. Men had their own struggles with such a loss. Women suffered differently. Jenny vowed to visit Fanny often, help her with the daily tasks that must go on, and put her own struggles and fatigue aside when she was with her. And she wouldn’t mention a word about the restrictions placed on women to mourn in silence and not too long, as though there were a timeline for grief to close the cracks in a family’s foundation.

  She must also include such loss in her novels—for any frontier reader would relate. There wasn’t a single family who hadn’t experienced a death of some kind. She would attempt to capture life inside her stories . . . give new meaning to the tragedies they couldn’t control.

  “It’s something you’re good at, Fanny. It will give you a sense of accomplishment, when right now you likely can’t feel much of anything except anguish.”

  Fanny sighed. “I have no skills. I couldn’t even keep my girl alive.”

  “You did everything you could for her. Illness . . . there’s so much we don’t control, Fanny. Only how we respond to what life hands us. And you have a talent I desperately need. Please.”

  Jenny had opened Hope School in the Lafayette house. She’d thought of the idea while washing clothes and wondered if mundane tasks might indeed be the catalyst for creativity. She got Ben’s agreement with the promise she’d be back on Sunny Hillside each weekend with the children and all summer long.

  “Not much of a married life though.” Ben had
chewed on his pipe stem. He never put tobacco in the bowl.

  “Men go off to the mines. Or they work large ranches East and leave their families to operate their farms. It’s what people have to do. I’ll make up stews, and you can fix potatoes and bacon easy enough. You’ll have plenty of eggs. I’ll still make butter to sell.”

  She could out-argue him, and he’d agreed, so Jenny had her subscription school she called Hope, and now Fanny was enlisted to help with the school’s Christmas pageant.

  Jenny admitted to herself that she liked the drama, the rehearsals, hearing children read the lines she wrote telling a story of a lost present and how it had been magically found and everyone lived happily. And then the grand performance. She had actors for the Bible story, and each student had a part. After all, the Christmas story was for everyone. She dressed Willis up in a fleece, and he moaned “Baaa! Baaa!” even when he wasn’t supposed to. Clara sang. One of the tallest boys was Joseph, and her youngest sister with the beautiful eyebrows, Sarah Maria, acted as Mary, who had to shout above the bleating sheep. The others were either shepherds or angels, and they had more than three wise men, who also had to yell above the bleating ram. Everyone laughed, even Fanny and Amos, grieving parents finding comfort in the family and friends who walked beside them as they were reminded of the story of Christ’s birth and promise.

  Jenny accepted the congratulations from her students’ parents and that night sank into bed happy.

  Her best work had been convincing Fanny that her labor was worthy and that there was life after grief. She loved seeing Fanny enjoy herself. As she told Ben, “She accepted my few coins to reimburse her for her stitching too.”

  “Always working to honor women’s labor,” Ben said. “Well done, Wife.”

  Spring was approaching, and Jenny knew she’d have to close the school down and be available for the farm work, especially cooking for all the men. Ben had enjoyed the winter, coming into Lafayette midweek and fixing meals so Jenny had more time for lesson preparations. He told of ways that other families adjusted to the challenges of frontier finance.

  “There are gold strikes in Idaho.” Ben turned the bacon and the aroma filled the large kitchen. Jenny sat at a day desk he’d built for her. “I was thinking this fall I might go there and make a strike like I did in Jacksonville before I met you.”

  “We’d be separated even more than this past winter.” She looked up from her foolscap.

  “If I made a strike, you wouldn’t have to have the school. We’d have enough with the farm.”

  He doesn’t see how much I love the teaching, having a part in contributing to the family through more than just laundry.

  He smiled at Clara, who sat waiting for the bacon. “I’d miss my pumpkins, that’s sure.”

  “I’m no pumpkin, Pa,” Clara said. “But Willis is a squash.”

  “Am not.”

  “Are so.”

  “Children.” Jenny’s voice stopped the fracas. Ben did enjoy his time with Clara and Willis. He was a good husband, despite his tendency to visit and bring back friends—at his leisure—for her to serve them supper. And he didn’t mind cooking for the family, which was a boon to her, though she couldn’t imagine him frying potatoes for his guests or hired men.

  Once they’d had a row over how his “guests” were treated. Two of his bachelor friends had stopped by Sunny Hillside Farm after the supper hour when Ben wasn’t home. Jenny had been quilting—not her most favorite activity—and she kept on as the men chatted with each other about whether Oregon would become a state, how they’d lose their autonomy as a territory able to make their own laws once Oregon joined the union. They talked around her, didn’t ask her opinion. Eventually realizing there would be no food forthcoming, they made some comment about it.

  “Oh, were you waiting to be fed? Had I known that’s what you stopped by for, I could have told you an hour ago and you could have made your way back to your own kitchen.” Which they then did and later told Ben about it. He’d been livid.

  “You provide when you can, knowing that someday someone will help you,” he had told her, his voice raised. “Hospitality is the bedrock of this country.”

  “No. Work is the bedrock, and I was working, but not to prepare their suppers. You get them married off so they can eat at home.” Poor souls who accept those proposals seeking stomach-soothing over love. “I’d say I’m not alone in my feelings about this. Why should women be expected to take care of everyone? It was the end of a long day, and they expected me to wait on them just because I was a woman.”

  “They’re neighbors.”

  “Who should eat at home or when invited.” Silence. Then, “The Farmer’s Wife might have words to say about such frontier hospitality. It’s the pioneer women who are expected to be hospitable while you men make the rules about what that looks like.”

  “As it should be,” Ben said.

  “Maybe one day it’ll be different. Ouch.” She had poked the needle into her finger, sucked on it. Her Farmer’s Wife gave her an outlet to express her upset, but it didn’t change anything for the lives of women and that had been her intent and still was.

  Her finger bled.

  “Let me kiss that and make it better,” Ben said.

  She let him. He said he understood that women got little rest and that she especially didn’t seem to know how to play.

  “We women have no time to play.”

  “You need to laugh a little more,” he’d told her and kissed her hand again. “Try to be a little more accommodating.”

  “Holy cow chips. One more task to put on my list.” She had sighed. “I’ll think on it.”

  “Good. Now let me hold you and kiss that pain away. I hate arguing with you.”

  “Because I almost always win.”

  He had grinned at that, and she let him pull her close.

  Come spring, they were expecting another Duniway.

  ELEVEN

  Surety

  JANUARY 1859

  _______

  Jenny listened. She’d been busy stuffing duck feathers for comforters while frying potatoes for their supper. She was as big as a washtub, carrying this third child, and her belly bumped against the table, so her back hurt as she stretched to fill the comforter. She wasn’t sure how she felt about another child so soon, but Ben wanted a big family. She blew feathers from her nose as she heard Ben say to yet another guest in their living room something about “surety.” Ben is offering to secure something? When she later recalled this day, it would be with the scent of bacon swirling around the house, children chattering, and her hands inside the softness of feathers, while her mind pondered uncertainty.

  She didn’t know well the man who’d be staying for supper. He’d stopped by and talked apple markets with Ben previously, as she remembered. Since the time she hadn’t been hospitable to two of Ben’s bachelor friends, she rarely said anything about the surprise meals (as she called them) that she had to serve.

  She peered into the room and saw something legal-looking in three folds lying on the slab table in front of them. This is not good. She put the feathers aside, sneezed—as she often did around duck feathers—and moved the frying pan off the burner with a scraping sound, then entered the room where Ben watched the children and “jawed” with Mr. Markham. Yes, that’s his name. Bob Markham.

  “What high finance is happening in our living room?” She kept her voice light. “I heard the word ‘surety.’ We can’t afford a cosigned note, Ben.”

  “Like good Oregonians, we look after each other,” Ben said. His eyebrow twitched. He’s nervous about my interfering. “We’re helping Bob here make his investment in the field. Don’t you like my pun, Wife?” Ben beamed.

  He’s trying to distract. Her heart started pounding a little faster. She reached for Willis and plopped him on her hip. He squirmed. Her belly got in the way, so she let him down.

  “And how are we helping Bob, here, become outstanding in his field?” She heard the sarc
asm in her voice and saw Ben frown.

  “Shouldn’t your little lady be protected from thoughts of business and investments?” Jenny heard the challenge to Ben’s “head of household” status in those words.

  “I’m signing a note at two percent per month, Abigail.”

  He’s called me Abigail!

  “They’ll be compounded semiannually until paid, but Bob can then get his loan. He’s good for it. You’ll manage your money well, won’t you, Bob?”

  “No question about it.”

  She could feel bile rise beneath the baby she carried. “That’s a hefty interest rate.” She turned to Ben. “If Bob”—she emphasized his name—“fails to pay, we could be ruined meeting that kind of obligation in his stead.”

  “Now, Jenny, let’s not air our underlings in public.”

  He’s offended that I bring up a concern? She was offended that he hadn’t.

  “You’ll always be protected, don’t you worry now. Is supper ready? I think I smell that bacon frying but no rasher of potatoes as yet.” He used his fingers to gesture her back into the kitchen the way she clucked at the chickens. She forced a smile, returned to the kitchen, helping three-year-old Willis onto the bench. “Clara, sit. I’ll serve you now.” She banged the pans on the stove, prepared the children’s plates, fed them, and cleaned their faces, and when the men came in, she served them but chose not to sit with them while they ate, going to her bedroom to write and await Bob’s departure. She was as frightened as when Ben got lost in the fog.

  Ben signed three notes for Bob. And they argued, fear fueling her words until Ben yelled, actually shouted at her. “Cease, woman. I can take no more. It’s done.”

  Their words led to nothing but them curled with their backs away from each other—after Jenny bathed the children and Ben read to them, followed by Jenny cleaning up the table and the kitchen. What could she do? I’m powerless.

  “It’s a lot of money, Ben,” she said in the morning, not wanting to challenge him nor return the argument to its burning state.