Where Lilacs Still Bloom (10 page)

“Don’t look like much.” Frank frowned.

“No, they don’t. But neither did our babies when they
arrived all bare and pink,” I said. “Let’s get these heeled into the ground.” And we did, the roots taking hold in this new land that had been my parents’.

When the buds opened a few weeks later, I realized that two of the Lemoine wouldn’t work; the leaves and buds were too small. “Those will have to go,” I told Frank.

“They will?” He looked grief stricken.

“I need to start with the strongest and best. We have to cut our losses.” He nodded, swallowed hard.

That left five to pin my hopes on.

I made my way with magnifying glass, crochet hook, and turkey feather, moving the first pollen from the Périer to one of my own lilacs that I’d noted was the closest to cream. Such a tiny hope, that pollen. I wondered if Luther Burbank felt such anticipation wrapped inside anxiety and caution as he did his work. “Please don’t let me make mistakes,” I prayed. “Please, let me do this right.” Then to the plant, I said, “Come on, tiny pollen. Give Hulda Klager the best you’ve got.”

I knew that it would take years before we knew if what we had invested would bring anything more than hard work and hope.

One pollination down, turkey feather and crochet hook; hat back, holding my breath. France to Washington State. Dreaming.

Hundreds more to go.

E
leven-year-old Ruth Reed watched her father walk a fine line, and he expected Ruth to walk there too. By day her father worked at the cheese plant. On Wednesday evenings Barney Reed led Bible classes at Woodland homes. A Seventh-Day Adventist, their Sabbath services never turned away people from other persuasions who came to the meetings he officiated with his bushy mustache and tiny glasses he adjusted often on his nose.

Ruth liked it best when they met at the Fred Lewis homestead on Whelan Road and combined their study efforts with Baptists, Methodists, and others. She listened to the banter and discussion, and afterward her father often told her mother that he’d “get converts yet out of those confused Presbyterians.”

It was Mrs. Klager that Ruth fancied the most. The
woman stood tall, and straight up and down. She always noticed Ruth, asking important things like how the tulip bulbs she’d given her were doing rather than commenting on “what a big girl she was becoming” like some of the other mothers did. During the discussions, Mrs. Klager asked probing questions of belief, especially about science and how faith informed it, or vice versa. Ruth didn’t always understand the questions, but she saw how they made her father’s face get red, and he talked faster than normal. Ruth heard that Mrs. Klager had been ill a long time, but she didn’t sound weak at their classes.

Ruth got another education after classes were over and he had a second piece of pie after they were home. Her father finished Mrs. Klager’s apple pie. Ruth didn’t tell him that Mrs. Klager had made those apples herself, or so she’d heard. Crumbs dribbling on his chin, her father took issue with most everything Mrs. Klager said. “She doesn’t have the slightest worry about messing with Eden,” he told her mother one February evening. “She accepts as gospel the writings of people like Darwin and now this Burbank fellow. She says she gives all that glory to God, but then she messes with plants trying to make a better daffodil or rose.” He chewed the apple pie with his front teeth, like a rabbit might. Her father’s back teeth hurt him when he chewed.

Ruth didn’t want to see her father more upset. She and her mother had something to tell him, and she didn’t want him saying no.

“The Baptists and Latter-day Saints and others claiming the Christian faith seemed to have no concern about what Mrs. Klager was saying,” Ruth’s mother said.

“Yes.” He jabbed the air with his fork. “They apparently like the idea of larger flowers, or in the case of that Burbank, bigger plums and even spineless cacti.”

“Isn’t that for cattle?” her mother posed. “Perhaps they see it as a way of subduing the animals and earth as God intended man to do.”

Her father frowned, and Ruth thought right then and there she might as well forget lessons. But he surprised her. “I suppose spineless cacti could mean the difference in places like Australia where cattle needed feed and there wasn’t enough water to grow it. And certainly not having to scrape off those barbs means an easier life for those farmers. But still,” he cautioned her mother, pausing to chew with his front teeth, “it interferes with Eden. Cacti aren’t even mentioned in the Bible. The Burbanks and the Klagers of the world take God’s creation and turn it into naked cacti, and somehow expect the world to accept it as better than what God Himself placed on this earth.”

“Papa?” Ruth cleared her throat, wanting to stop him before his rant raged on for hours. “Mama and I have something to tell you.”

“What? What is it, Ruth?” He towered over her like an unhappy teacher.

“I have a job. Later this spring.”

“You do? Well, that’s resourceful of you.”

“I’ll be able to pay for my own piano lessons.”

“Piano lessons, eh? You have a talent for that?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “There’s no better lesson than learning to give your best to your employer. So what will you be doing?”

“Helping Mrs. Klager,” Ruth said.

“Mrs. Klager?” He glared at his wife.

Her mother said, “Two of the Klager girls are getting married, and she needs additional workers. Mrs. Klager was awful poorly last summer and nearly died.”

“God punishes when we’re wayward,” he said.

“But not all trouble is punishment, you said that yourself,” her mother said. “When you lost your job in Ontario and we had to come to America, you said it was God’s plan.”

He squinted at Ruth. She stepped back, swallowed, let her mind drift.

Ruth saw Mrs. Klager’s garden as shapes of color just as she noticed the shapes of most of her world.

She’d been attracted to the Klager yard the very first time she rode with her family past the picket fence. “Look there,” she’d pointed.

“It’s not polite to point,” her mother said.

“But see? That garden in front of the house is shaped like a flatiron.”

Her father had slowed, and the vibrant colors clustered inside that household shape made her wonder what the names
of all those blooms might be. She saw a woman bent to the tall grasses and three other girls with hats and gloves working silently together, backs up, then down; kneeling, then standing; hoes digging, then offering a leaning post. A wind chime of laughter floated toward Ruth and her parents as the horse plodded by. Ruth twisted to watch the women as their buggy rolled past. Imagine, people working together without hearing, “Keep your head up; don’t look down so much. Pick up your feet; you walk like an elephant. Take your fingers out of your mouth. Straighten up.” These were daily admonitions from her father, and her mother repeated them when he wasn’t present, adding a few of her own. Her mother spoke more softly, but the piercing felt as painful. She knew they wanted the best for her; she trusted that. She thought this might be how they expressed their love for her, wanting to shape her into the perfect girl. But she wasn’t, would never be, the shape they wanted.

“Get your father a cup of coffee.” Her mother’s words brought Ruth back. To Ruth’s father, her mother said, “Perhaps Mrs. Klager having a need our daughter can meet is part of God’s plan as well. And it pays for the lessons.”

“She’s not a good influence, eh?”

“I can think for myself, Papa. It’s being charitable, helping another. You say we should. That way I can stay and go to school here in town. I won’t have to—”

“No, no, now that goes too far. You’ll continue to go to
school as we plan for you. What would people say if you worked and lived in town instead of on Martin’s Bluff?”

“But I can’t work the Sabbath,” Ruth said.

“She needs more experiences.” Her mother poured cream into her husband’s cup. “And staying with the Klagers is a way to do that.”

“What’ll you be doing? How does all this happen without my knowledge?”

“Watering plants, Papa. Carrying buckets. It’s good work. I’m strong.”

Her father sipped his coffee. “We’ll see. Let’s go home now.” He put the pie plate in the sink. “A snake to worry about, eh? Right in my own backyard.”

Ruth didn’t know if he referred to her or to Mrs. Klager.

T
he future sons-in-law stepped forward to help put finishing touches on the yard where they’d be married. Fred Wilke, who would wed Lizzie, farmed for the Goerigs but he had a passion for travel, something Lizzie loved too. She took pleasure in visiting faraway places, and Fred promised he’d take care of that wish.

Nell Irving Guild was Delia’s choice. A farmer like Frank, he had the kindest eyes, and he treated Delia as though she were fine china. She did at times look fragile with her tiny waist, which she didn’t get from me with my pickle shape.

Both girls planned to wear white, another difference from Amelia and I at our weddings where black or lavender was the acceptable color. Neither girl would wear jewelry, and both dresses had sections of lace at the throat that let the skin show peekaboo through. They were going to be beautiful, and the men in their lives knew it.

Then there was Martha. At eighteen, that girl had already decided to become a teacher. She’d leave soon after the weddings for school in Portland. I tried not to think of the emptiness all my girls moving on would leave behind. Instead, I thought of Martha’s dreams too and had no doubt she’d be a fine teacher if she could keep herself from “di-gress-ions” as she’s prone to stretch out that word.

Ruth Reed helped us too, a young girl taking piano lessons from Lizzie at the Presbyterian church instead of here—some condition her father placed on her. I was just pleased she had time with Lizzie at the church and was allowed to help me out after school. She was so thankful her father allowed her to attend school in town, and so was I. She was a big-boned girl, the buckets were heavy, and my, we had so many plantings to tend.

On a May morning, serenaded by goldfinches and robins, we pulled weeds and planted alyssum to line the wood-chipped paths where guests would wander with their punch and the men their ale (carried to the barn) following the Presbyterian service. Roses bloomed in June. I hoped for sweet-smelling daphnes bobbing their blue heads.

“Let’s be sure we pull the weeds beside the barn,” I told Fritz.

“Ah, Ma, no one’s going to even look at the barn.”

“You don’t know these neighbors.” I shook my finger at him. “They have good eyes. And that’s where you men always
end up with your brew.” It disgusted me the men drinking, but so long as they didn’t invade my house with liquor, I turned a blind eye to it. After all, my father had been a brewmaster, so I couldn’t very well join the teetotaler society. They smoked there too, but at least I collected the butts and used them for my nicotine tea to poison insects.

“Let the daisies stand out against that brown barn as the backdrop instead of gangly thistle,” I told Fritz. “Ruthie will be here before long to help water. I’ll be glad when her parents decide to let her stay here. Poor child. It makes quite a trek for her to walk the distance.”

“She’s a good kid,” Fritz said, and he sounded like an old man, which made me chuckle since Ruthie’s but four years younger than his fifteen years.

Lizzie and Delia were busy on their knees, pulling weeds in the peonies’ plots. I hoped the blooms would hold from their usual May into later June for the wedding. Laughter rose as the girls chattered, and I was both delighted that they were such good friends and at the same time saddened knowing after next month they’d be gone from this place.

“Don’t look so sad,” Martha said, coming up beside me.