Katerina's Wish (7 page)

“It won't be a chore, it will be a garden,” Holena said.

“Your mother's right—it will be more work,” Old Jan said. “I can't till the soil, but I can do other things. I can weed and
harvest. I can build trellises for your beans. I'll help out all I can, so it won't be a burden.”

“And it will be worth it, Ivana, you will see,” Papa said.

Momma only tightened her mouth and set the dishes on the counter.

As I washed the dishes that evening, I thought about the garden and all the plans that had been made at the table as we feasted on fresh fish and plum dumplings. I was excited to get started, proud to be helping my family, and determined to overcome my mother's disapproval. We'd soon have a thriving garden and fresh vegetables, and she'd see that it had been the right thing to do. After all, what harm could possibly come from planting a garden?

ON MONDAY EVENING,
after the washing was done and supper was eaten, I took Old Jan's spade out behind the house and began turning the hard, rocky soil. Old Jan offered advice. Aneshka and Holena picked out the biggest rocks and arranged them in neat borders on the edge of the plot. Momma did not help, but she sat at the back door with her mending and watched our progress. I could see fear in her eyes when she did not know I was looking. It only pushed me to work harder. When she saw our hopes turning into success, she would be pleased. I fell into bed exhausted that night, but happy.

When we had finished planting the patch behind the house, we turned a bit of soil by the front porch steps and planted some of the poppy seeds. The rest we took to Old Jan's house and planted along the porch there, while he instructed us on their placement. He wanted them to be just as his wife had had them in the Old Country. We had just finished planting them when Karel and Mark emerged.

“They won't grow,” Karel said. “The seeds are too old. It's been four years since we left Bohemia.”

Mark shrugged. “Who knows, it's worth a try.”

“A lot of trouble for nothing, if you ask me,” Karel said.

“Anything worth having is worth the trouble of getting it, isn't it, Trina,” Old Jan said.

I agreed it was, although privately I had to think about my papa and his farm. He had come to America willing to work the coal to get it, but it wasn't enough. There was no promise that hard work got you anywhere—it could just as easily come to nothing. Still, we had to try. So I pretended I agreed with Old Jan.

After the planting was done, we waited. Old Jan came by to pull weeds. On hot days I hauled buckets of water from the creek and he spread them along the rows. Every morning Holena rushed out into the backyard to check for growth, though both Old Jan and I told her it would take time. At last, a week later, she was rewarded with the discovery of thick sprouts in the bean row, pushing their bowed heads up through the soil. Holena came dashing into the kitchen before she had even eaten breakfast. We followed her to the garden, where she showed us her discovery. Aneshka, after some scrutiny, reported the first sign of grassy corn sprouts as well.

I secretly glanced at Momma as my sisters padded barefoot along the rows, squealing with delight at each new discovery. Her face had softened and she was almost smiling, but then she saw me looking her way and her expression tightened again.

“I am glad things are sprouting, Trina, but don't get your hopes up that anything will come of it.”

“I know it may not, Momma. But maybe it will. Old Jan says that anything worth having is worth working for.”

“So it is,” she said. “And we have plenty of work to do today, so enough nonsense. Go start heating the irons and I'll get the clothes from the line.”

When the ironing was done that afternoon, Momma took the majority of our laundry earnings from the can on the shelf and sent me to the store for meat, as she did every Tuesday. Since the day Mr. Torentino had sold his plums, I had hated this chore. Mr. Johnson still gave me his usual salesman smile, but his eyes were hard. The previous week I had sent Aneshka in to make our purchases while I waited outside, but Mr. Johnson had tempted her into spending all the change on sweets, and I had gotten a scolding for it. So today I was by myself, with strict instructions to buy only what was on the list.

Mr. Torentino's wagon was just rumbling away from the store. I waited a few minutes before I entered, in case they had had another argument. I didn't want to do anything to offend Mr. Johnson again. Inside, he was stacking canned goods on the shelf behind the counter. I waited in silence for him to finish and notice me. When he did, he glared at me for a moment before pasting on his salesman smile. I knew my week's absence had done nothing to soften him.

Clenching my money nervously, I told him what I wanted. Without comment he set the goods on the counter in front of me. He totaled the amount and I handed him my money.

“Well,” he said, looking at the cash in his hand, “you have three cents extra here. That will get you a piece of licorice, three lemon drops, or a stick of horehound.” He gestured toward the jars of candy lined up on the counter. “What will it be?”

I swallowed hard and spoke. “I'd like my change, please, sir.”

His salesman smile remained on his face, but stiffened. “It's
just a few pennies, and I bet you've worked hard all day. You deserve a treat.”

“No, thank you, sir. I'd like my change, please,” I repeated, holding out my hand.

“What's the matter—you were happy enough to spend your money on Torentino's plums. Isn't my stock good enough for you?”

I did not know what to say to that, so I just waited silently for my change. With a shake of his head, he opened the cash register drawer, dropped my money inside, and took out the pennies he owed me.

My money safely in my pocket, I quickly gathered my purchases. “Thank you,” I said, and hurried toward the door.

Mr. Johnson had already turned back to his shelves, but I heard him mutter something about “tightfisted Greeks.” I could have kept walking, but I did not. I straightened my shoulders and raised my chin a little.

“Czechy,” I said.

“Hmm?” he said, turning from his work. He didn't know I had heard him.

“We are Czechy,” I said. “Not Greek.”

He waved an impatient hand and went back to his work. “Bohunks, huh? You all look the same to me,” he said. “Just like sheep.”

My cheeks were flushed as I left the store, but I vowed to keep it to myself at home. My father would be angered by the insult, and my mother would scold me for talking back to Mr. Johnson. And since there was nowhere else for us to buy the things we needed, we couldn't afford to offend him.

When I arrived at our house, Holena was sitting on the front steps, her chin on her knees, staring at the place where
we had planted the poppies. I followed her gaze, expecting to see sprouts breaking through the ground, but there was nothing there.

“What are you looking at?” I asked.

“Why haven't the poppies sprouted, Trina?”

“Maybe they just need a little longer,” I said.

“Do you think Karel was right?”

“I don't know. We will have to wait and see.”

Over the next few days, I went out to the garden in the back each morning to see the progress, but Holena went to look for the poppies. I knew they hadn't sprouted by the look on her face when she sat down at the table for her breakfast.

“I don't know why you're in a bother about them,” Aneshka said. “They're only flowers. We can't eat them.”

“None of it may come to anything, anyway,” Momma reminded us all as she set our usual bowls of porridge on the table.

“But it might,” I said. “And then maybe we won't have to spend so much money at the store and we can save a little.”

Momma shook her head. “We'll still have to buy all the same things as we do now. Unless you can grow meat or coffee or flour in that garden of yours.”

Despite myself, my heart sank. She was right; we couldn't live on the kinds of vegetables growing in my garden. There were just too many things that we needed that weren't in my little garden.

Momma looked at my face, and hers softened a little. “It's a good thing you are doing, Trina, and I am sure our meals will be better if anything comes to fruit. But you have to be realistic.”

I nodded and ate, then started my chores, still thinking
about what she had said. Our biggest weekly expense at the store was meat. After wash day and Papa's payday, we had enough money for fresh meat from the store, and we certainly couldn't go without—at least, Papa couldn't. As hard as he worked, he needed something to sustain him. And Momma was right that I couldn't grow meat. I didn't have a cow or a pig, and even if I did, we had no way to feed it or to keep the meat if we butchered it. But I could fish. If I could bring fish home from time to time, even just once a week, I could save us a little money—maybe two or three dollars a week. And that could be one hundred dollars or more in a year!

The thought sent a tingle up my spine. One hundred dollars was an awful lot of money. I thought about it until I was finished with the last of my chores. When my sisters went outside to play, I went along, with one of Papa's old newspapers. I sat down on the porch steps and flipped through it, looking for the pages of advertisements. I knew they were in there, because when we had first arrived in America, Papa had used what little English he had to translate them for us each night—ads for land and farms here in America. I wasn't sure if he still read them or not, but he never read them out loud anymore.

I found the page and flattened it on my lap. A long list of ads in small print offered everything from horses and buggies to the services of laundresses and dress makers. Mixed in were the ads I wanted to read. Most of them were for established farms. My favorites were the ones that had fruit trees. I liked the idea of acres of apples or cherries or plums, so I looked for those first, and I found one right off that sounded perfect. A black border highlighted the ad. Inside the border, large block letters declared
LAND! LAND! LAND!
and below that
ORCHARDS! PLENTY OF WATER! MOUNTAIN VIEWS!
I could see it in my mind—at least, until I read
the price: $2,500.00! I could never save that kind of money! Still, we didn't need mountain views; we just wanted a farm of our own. I read on, refusing to let my hope collapse, but just as the passing months had worn away at my father's dream, reading these ads wore away at mine, too. Even undeveloped land was selling for two or three hundred dollars, and it would cost much more to turn it into a farm. I couldn't see that we would get out of the coal camp with a penny less than five hundred dollars. Catching fish for one meal a week wouldn't be enough—but if there were other things I could do to save us money, maybe it was a start.

What we needed was a better source of meat—someone who could provide it at a better price than the company store. I remembered the farm where I had traded for seeds, and I had an idea, but I didn't share it with anyone. If my plans didn't work out, it would disappoint my sisters.

The next time I went to the store was on Saturday, after Papa got paid. As usual, there was a bit of change from my purchases, but I didn't return it to the can behind the stove when I got home. I felt guilty and wondered if I was stealing, but I planned to use it to help my family, so I did not see how I could be. After all, when Aneshka had bought candy with the change, she had not been stealing.

That afternoon, I asked Momma's permission to go fishing again, and she agreed. She had enjoyed the fish as much as the rest of us. I walked to Old Jan's house, where he sat on the front porch whittling. I borrowed the fishing pole, promising to bring fish for his supper as well as ours. Then I set off over the ridge.

As before, I caught fish in the stream, and as before I worked my way upstream, but this time I was not surprised to find the
farm. This time, I had been looking for it. I left my string of fish and my pole in the bushes and walked to the cluster of buildings, carefully stepping in the space between the rows of young corn in the fields.