Shyly, Magdalena pulled her hands from the folds of her skirt. Maud noted the black crescents of her fingernails. The girl blinked at Maud, her mouth puckering. “I tried to get them clean,” she said. “But we didn’t have any more soap. Mama said she was going to make more but the baby was too sick.”
Setting aside the pie-making project, Maud washed the girl’s hands; intertwining Magdalena’s small fingers with her own, she worked up suds with a bit of lye soap. Then Maud laid out a slice of bread with butter and fresh chokeberry jam and put a kettle on the stove to heat the bathwater. When the girl had finished eating, Maud set to work on her matted braids. Magdalena submitted stoically to Maud’s comb, grimacing only when Maud tugged on the knots, but when the big kettle started singing, Maud picked up the shears.
She considered asking Julia’s leave, but she didn’t want to disturb her, and there was no choice in the matter. Maud guessed the girl’s hair had not been fully combed out in months.
Magdalena looked at the scissors, white-eyed as a spooked colt.
“I’m sorry, sweet pea, it’s just that your hair is too tangled to comb out. I’m going to cut your braids off. If you don’t like it, it will grow out in no time.”
Five minutes later, Magdalena’s hair hung below her chin, and the comb slipped through without resistance.
As Maud poured the hot water into the large washbasin, the room filled with steam. She stripped the girl down next to the warm stove. The girl’s tiny frame was knobby and unsubstantial. Dark tan lines ran across her forearms and lower legs and the back of her neck. Maud tested the water, added a bit of cold, swirled it, then picked up her spindly niece and placed her into the warm water. Magdalena sat quietly in the bath, allowing Maud to scrub her until her skin was rosy and her hair was clean.
Throughout, Magdalena clutched her doll, who was now colored a streaky gray from the bathwater.
“Can I wash your dolly for you?” Maud asked. She didn’t care for these cheap Frozen Charlotte dolls. Naked, chalky white with painted features and immovable joints, they were sold in boxes that looked like little coffins. “I think she’d like to have a bath, too.”
Reluctantly, Magdalena stretched out her arms and let her take the doll. Maud rinsed the naked porcelain figure carefully and dried her with a clean dishtowel.
“What’s your dolly’s name?” Maud said. “Would you like me to make some clothes for her?”
“Her name is Dorothy,” Magdalena said softly. “I think she would like some clothes. She gets very cold when the wind blows.”
Maud wrapped her niece in a towel she had set out to warm near the stove, then swiftly plaited her hair, the braids so short now that they stuck out from the sides of her face. When Maud had the girl completely clean and re-dressed, her face pink, her hair smooth, the pair reentered the parlor, where Maud found Julia once again asleep, this time with the baby in her arms. The bottle of peptonized milk was still almost full. Julia’s eyes opened, and she looked at Magdalena, now nicely combed and scrubbed clean, but she hardly reacted. She had a glazed expression on her face, and a yellowish pallor showed through her cheek’s wind-whipped suntan.
“Julia, I’ll take the baby now. You go on up and get some rest.”
Julia retrieved the medicine bottle before she crossed the room and trudged slowly up the stairs. As the hours passed, Julia did not make a reappearance, and Maud, hoping to let her sister rest, sat with the baby in her arms, trying to coax him into feeding while Magdalena hovered nearby. Robin and Bunting, happily amusing themselves, zipped through the room from time to time, full of laughter, carrying toys, a ball, and, once, a stray calico cat, and then ran outside again.
“Run along and play with the boys, Magdalena,” Maud said. But the girl shook her head and stayed near Maud, whispering imagined conversations with her doll. Though Maud longed to follow the boys outside into the brisk prairie air, she stayed at her post, abandoning the bottle and using a teaspoon to dribble milk into the baby’s mouth, most of which appeared to drain back out without being swallowed. In spite of four straight hours of feeding, he had taken in just a few ounces. Maud longed for her mother, always so competent in the sickroom. Surely, she would know what to do.
As if in answer to Maud’s wish, the following day, the post arrived with a letter from Mother, who had heard the news of baby Jamie’s illness. A great believer in healthful remedies, like Maud she was a skeptic about many of the popular pharmaceuticals, dubious concoctions that, she believed, sometimes made people sicker. Mother treated people with natural tinctures and soothing balms—using the old-fashioned treatments she had learned from her father, a doctor.
In her letter, her advice was firm:
You must find a wet nurse for the baby. Not a single one of the medical concoctions will bring a baby to health like a mother’s milk.
As Julia read Matilda’s letter, she looked forlorn. She said that the nurse who had attended her on the homestead had encouraged her to dry up her milk because the hard life she led would spoil her milk, and so Julia had dutifully bound her breasts. But the baby could not keep any of the substitutes down—not the lactated powder, not the bitter peptonized milk, not even the teaspoons of brandy the doctor had prescribed to stimulate his appetite. Maud had given the baby no further drops of the Godfrey’s Cordial, convinced that it made him too sleepy to eat, but little Jamie remained frail and sluggish in spite of Maud’s constant ministrations.
Within a day of receiving Matilda’s letter, Maud had found a stout Bohemian woman who sat in the corner holding Jamie all day long, putting him at the breast, and if he wouldn’t suck, she would simply let the milk drip into his mouth from her swollen brown nipple. After several days, he started to rally. At night, the nurse went home, and Maud made herself a cot so that she could sleep beside him in the warm kitchen, where she fed him condensed milk from a bottle, insisting that her sister needed to rest. But Julia still seemed exhausted and continued to drop off at odd moments throughout the day. Maud watched worriedly as her sister kept her amber dram of Godfrey’s Cordial always at her side.
The sisters were consumed with caring for the children and the sick infant and rarely left the house, so more than ever Maud craved Frank’s good cheer, which burst like rays of sunshine whenever he was home. In the mornings, he got up early, dressed, and headed downtown, where he was working on his new variety store. His cheerful manner, friendly voice, and jaunty step on the stairs always set Maud’s heart soaring. The children ran to him, and Frank regaled them with stories of the goings-on downtown. He described his new store, Baum’s Bazaar, and all of the splendors that would be sold within. Half the time, Frank came home from downtown with something in his pocket—a can of oysters, a stuffed clown, a box of chocolates. Even Julia seemed to perk up when Frank was home, listening to his tales with an unfocused gaze.
Only Magdalena didn’t join in at story time. Since the day of the bath, she had attached herself to her Auntie Maud, playing at housekeeping as Maud swept and cooked and made beds and served and cleared the table and ironed. She had arrived in Aberdeen looking as raggedy as a beggar girl, but now, with Maud’s attention, she was clean and tidy, with an angular face and giant watchful eyes. The girl had taken to bringing Maud little gifts—a single bluebird feather, a bunch of bee balm, a smooth round stone—offering these small tokens on the palm of her outstretched hand. Her deep-set eyes, fringed with dark lashes, calmly regarded Maud. She rarely smiled or spoke above a whisper. Again and again, Maud marveled at how different her niece was from her own two boys, a rough-and-tumble mess of torn britches and scabbed knees, and both of them mile-a-minute talkers, full of wild stories—clearly cut from their father’s cloth. Maud adored her happy-go-lucky sons. Yet she had never imagined that she would be a mother to only boys. She wanted a girl to complete their family, and to carry on the Gage tradition. Nevertheless, Maud had accepted that she would never have another child. The doctor had made it clear: another pregnancy would endanger her life.
One evening, as Maud sat carefully mending and patching one of Magdalena’s worn dresses, she asked Frank if there was a little bit of spare fabric at the store that she might use to make Magdalena a new one. The following evening, Frank showed up with a bolt of cotton cloth.