The Springsweet (6 page)

Nonetheless, I circumnavigated the soddy twice and was almost proud of myself. At least, until my dear cousin, the chicken tormenter, shrieked through and sent me tumbling.

"Louella, enough!" Birdie had not one hint of amusement or indulgence in her voice.

I lay in the dirt, staring into a sky bright enough to sting my eyes. Blinking through my blindness, I pressed my elbows into the ground. That stirred the fine dust, which turned my nose to twitching. Now I had stunted two senses as I sprawled there.

My corset's steel conspired against me; for all my might, I couldn't push myself up. Flopping against the hard pillow of the yoke, I gazed helplessly at the sky once more. Still boundless, its expanse mocked me, stretching everywhere when I could do nothing but lie there.

Then Louella's face filled my sight as she came over to poke at me. "Mama says I'm sorry."

"I am too," I replied. I held my hand out to her, "Can you help me up?"

With puppyish grunts, Louella pulled as hard as she could. And for a moment, I thought I might be freed, but she lost her grip. She sat down hard, and I thumped my head on the yoke when I slipped back again.

"For Pete's sake," Birdie said. She didn't finish the thought, but in a blur of motion, she lifted Louella out of the dirt, then hauled me to my feet as if I were made of nothing more than down.

Looking me over, she sucked a breath through her teeth. Her eyes narrowed, seeing straight past my gown and into my undergarments. It was plain she measured my corset with her gaze; then, without mercy, she said, "Go take it off."

"Let me take out the busk stiffener," I bargained.

Birdie didn't indulge
me,
either. "You can keep it for Sundays and callings, but I've got no use for you if you can't bend down or stand up on your own."

My face flamed. Oklahoma Territory had no end of in dignities, it seemed. A welcome by robbery and gunpoint, a first night in a stranger's bed, and now the loss of my corset. I didn't want to be precious, truly I didn't, and I
could
see Birdie's point.

But I still stung as I hunched beneath the raw ceiling of the soddy. It struck me then, as I worked a myriad of buttons and peeled off layer after layer, that whether I wanted to be precious or not, I certainly was. Standing there in my chemise and drawers, I folded my corset and put it in a shelf dug out of the wall.

Prickles crawled my skin, and I realized that this little house had its advantages. It was cooler than the open fields, for certain. Once I could breathe deep, I smelled the freshness of it, the rich, welcoming cool of a root cellar, only above ground.

Pulling my petticoats and dress back on, I searched my own body with my hands. I felt rather like jelly poured out of its glass. I held my shape but wobbled all the same.

"Let me try again," I told Birdie when I stepped outside once more.

It was strange—I felt the sun more directly through my gown, and the wind more directly as well. The yoke, though heavy yet, settled more comfortably on my shoulders, now that it wasn't compressing me into my stays.

"Lou can show you the well," Birdie said, hanging the pails on the yoke again. "Just fill them halfway at first, until you get used to it. Do your best to get that basin filled; I need to work on some lace for Caroline in town."

"Yes, ma'am," I said, then squared myself to do as she asked. I had taken only a few steps into the prairie when I heard her call after me. Turning toward her, I managed to stay on my feet—quite an accomplishment in itself. "Yes?"

Birdie put her hands on her hips and told me with a scrap of sympathy in her voice, "You'll get used to it."

And I doubted not at all when I replied, "I'm sure I will."

***

Standing over the little stove, Birdie swirled her wooden spoon in a bubbling pot. Her glances in my direction became rare as I proved I was perfectly capable of holding Louella in my lap and showing her how to stitch on her little piece of muslin.

"Do you want to see my favorite?" I asked.

Glad to be done, Louella became an anchor in my lap and laid her head against my shoulder. I turned the fabric around, trying to smooth a spot. The scrap had seen far better days, though. Once, it was cream colored; now it was dark as a shadow on its edges, and varying shades of gray throughout.

"All right, duck," I said. Finding my fingers, I started a border on the scrap. A little, ornate chain appeared with my careful sewing. "This is a chained featherstitch. Do you see how it loops and joins up?"

Louella nodded, and Birdie looked back at me. "Don't do anything you can't pick out. Thread's dear." Then, as she turned back to her pot, I heard her mutter, "But then, what isn't?"

Quiet, I told Louella, "I have a world of experience picking stitches back out. But let's put some in. Look, I'm going to make a pretty pattern with it."

Stuffing a finger in her mouth, Louella swayed, watching my stitches bloom on her cloth. Her lashes kept falling, and I thought very much that she might sleep right there on my lap.

It was sweet for me, how warm and real she was in the curve of my arms. How useful I felt, though I was hardly teaching her anything at this point. Her hair smelled of sunshine and prairie grass, burned clean by the land.

Tempered by her calm, I found myself drifting pleasantly too. My fingers danced, and the needle slipped between them like a silver fish leaping over waves. The muslin shimmered, the same way the prairie did when the wind rushed across it.

On the horizon of the edge, past the stitched field of grain I made, it seemed very dark. Without thinking, I murmured to Birdie as I turned the scrap again. "Will the chickens go in their coop if it storms?"

"If such a thing ever happened, they would," she replied.

"It rained on me yesterday, and I think it's going to again."

"From your lips to God's ears. We didn't get a drop, and we could use it," Birdie said. "I'll be lucky if my corn row is ankle high by July."

I hummed softly, my embroidered field growing. It flourished with each sway, and each fluttering sigh from the baby in my arms. Rubbing my face against Louella's silky cheek, I repeated, "I do think it will."

A crack of thunder agreed.

Though the thick sod walls insulated us from the sound, it startled Louella from her near-nap. She slid from my lap and threw open the front door. What we hadn't seen through the oilpaper windows was the sky kneading itself darker and darker. Faint, lavender veins of heat lightning coursed through the clouds.

Any sky could threaten, and lightning meant nothing when it was the threadlike, embroidered sort. But the wind turned, and it smelled of rain-—that distant, heavy greenness that comes before a storm.

Leaving my sewing on the little chair, I said, "I'm going to put the chickens in, just in case."

"You do that," Birdie said, and I felt her eyes on me all the way out the door.

***

Chickens, it turned out, rather liked the rain.

I'd had a devil of a time getting them into the coop the night before, and the following morning they splashed in the mud like unruly children.

"They're eating bugs," Louella said, standing over the chickens instead of scaring them out of their wits.

And she wasn't wrong—the storm had scoured the night, leaving morning full of twisting worms and newly bloomed flowers.

Even the sky seemed scrubbed clean. The horizon that just yesterday faded into a dusty haze now stretched on forever. When I squinted, I made out the shape of another homestead in the distance.

It gleamed gold in the early light, a timber house instead of a soddy. A curl of smoke rose from it, another family in the wilderness breaking their fast. Something about that made my heart swell. The world went on around me, and we were all connected by earth and rain and the bobbing heads of poppy mallow and indigo.

This is a good place.

I didn't so much think it as feel it—a certainty that didn't settle in the marrow of my bones but emerged from it. I smiled at the basin we'd set out, now full of rainwater to wash our clothes. Though my breast and bone still protested the lack of a corset, I had to admit I found the way the wind slipped through my clothes a singular pleasure.

"Time for breakfast," I told Louella.

I would have picked her up, but she'd run outside without stockings or shoes, and now she, like the chickens, wore a layer of mud. I laughed when she ran straight inside—yet another advantage to a soddy. Louella could hardly track mud in on a dirt floor!

"I'll be heading into town this week," Birdie said as she sat with a tin pan in her lap. She'd baked a bit of corn cake and boiled last night's beans again to heat them. Louella got the biggest share of both because she was growing, but even her portion was small.

As Birdie offered neither honey nor butter, I didn't ask for them. But, shamefully, I missed them desperately. The beans tasted only of beans and a bit of salt; the corn cake was gritty—not sweet or light the way Mama's cornbread was. My mouth watered for breakfasts I had bolted down without thought in Baltimore: fresh eggs, and bacon, and hotcakes shining with maple syrup.

Apparently, my memories played on my face, for Birdie put her fork down and said, "I know this isn't much, but Caroline will be paying me for this month's lace soon. We'll have a proper dinner to welcome you then."

Embarrassment slapped my cheeks scarlet. "This is good."

"No, it's not." Birdie snorted and picked her fork up again. There was no sadness in it, simply matter-of-factness. "I've been putting a dollar aside each month to get a hog or a cow."

"Milk," Louella sang, chasing a bean around her plate.

"Yes, probably a calf," Birdie agreed. "It's a hard thing to balance. With a cow, we'd have milk and butter and cream, and it'll happily feed itself through the summer."

Though I had never considered what keeping animals might mean, I guessed the converse. "Whereas a pig won't do anything but demand feed and scraps for months, until it's big enough to slaughter?"

Impressed, Birdie nodded. "Exactly right."

"I could take on some sewing too. My stitches are good, and..."

"No, ma'am." Birdie ladled a bit of the bean broth into Louella's plate. "I need you to mind Louella and the chores. I can accomplish plenty of sewing when I'm not doing everything else. And if you keep Lou entertained, we might yet have some eggs."

My traitor stomach growled, and at that, my hard, hard-working Aunt Birdie threw her head back and laughed.

***

Thus, my first days on the prairie passed in hard labor.

The little vegetable patch behind the soddy drank all we could give it and then demanded more. So did Louella.

Water for farming, for drinking, for washing—all of it had to be carted by hand. It was the first task of each day, before I could start anything else.

Yesterday morning, I'd hauled water and grubbed for early wild onions and Jerusalem artichokes. Then came the afternoon. I hauled water and scrubbed Louella clean once the mud had dried up. After that, I hauled water for our dinner of thin pea soup and chicory tea.

Now, standing alone by the well, I glared at the yoke and gave it a little kick. No one was there to see me do it, and I thought I had earned a tantrum.

But I was annoyed by my own petulance. This was just what I had waited for, what I had begged for—a new life of labor in the West. And it wasn't awful—just hard, and tedious.

I bent to lay the yoke across my shoulders. Full buckets dangled on either end of it, held safe by grooves carved into the wood. Carefully, I rose to standing. I had gotten brave lately, carrying back full buckets. But that meant every step had to be deliberate lest I slosh all the water out between the well and the soddy.

I could hear my mother laughing from a distance, pointing out what a good lesson in posture this chore was. Though I imagined her amused, I certainly wasn't. I felt every inch bruised and battered and badly used.

It did little to soothe me to know I had yet to gather the laundry I'd left on top of swaying prairie grasses to dry. Marching back, I made pictures out of the clouds and hummed to myself.

A waltz measured my steps and reminded me fondly of Thomas. There were no tears in thinking about him at our first dance, asking for all my waltzes. Once I had danced in Irish lace, in my beloved's arms, to the intimate third-beat of Mr. Chopin's compositions.

My memories shortened the walk and drifted away like so much morning fog when I reached the yard once more. They left nothing but a sweet impression in my mouth, like the lingering flavor of a penny candy.

I poured my bounty into the basin Birdie had left in the yard. In a bit, I'd split it into dinner water and washing water. I took a moment to catch my breath.

Still, when Louella shrieked by, I plucked her off her feet. It was a kindness to the chickens, run ragged by her chasing, and a treat for me. She was a warm, squirming bundle, sweetened by wind and exertion.

"You're mine, mine, mine," I told her, rocking her like a baby in my arms.

Kicking her feet, Louella shrieked her reply. "No, no, no!

My back protested, but I swung her around. Then it was my turn to shriek, because she flung herself headlong from my arms. Though I lunged to catch her, she was back on her feet and fleeing into the prairie again.

Lifting my skirts, I chased her, for the sun had dipped at the horizon, and Emerson's warnings against wolves and bobcats floated to the top of my thoughts.

Louella was nothing more than a shaking of the grass. I heard her laughter and saw the ripples she left in the field-—the only traces I had to find her. Though she was small, she was sure-footed.
Perhaps half goat,
I thought uncharitably as I stumbled across the uneven ground.

Sweat soaked me beneath my dress; the prairie was deceptive in its openness, hiding vicious heat in the clarity of the air. By the time I caught a glimpse of Louella, I was dizzy and thought myself quite liable to swoon before I caught her.

But she stopped, then somehow rose above the tall green and golden grasses that swayed from here to the horizon. In my lightheadedness, I believed for a moment that she might jump up and take flight like a little mockingbird.