Papa looks up at Mama ’cause he knows I want no part in a sewing circle, but she has already turned back to the popping eggs. Then he looks at me. I shake my head, begging him to take me with him. There has always been Mama’s world inside, and Papa’s world out there, and me toeing the path between.
He shrugs, telling me he ain’t up for a fight. ‘Course,’ he says. ‘I’ve got to fix the North gate, since that fool horse kicked through it. But I suppose I can get it hung without my farmhand.’
‘Well,’ Mama says, sliding my plate in front of me, ‘I would be grateful for the help.’
After breakfast, Mama sets me to peeling and chopping potatoes for the supper soup, and when that is done we all sit down around the woodstove with the sewing. Mama is still trying to teach me about being a good farm wife and Winter is the best time for women’s work, but that don’t mean I want to be kept inside with her and Betsy, pricking my fingers and drawing beads of blood.
All Summer Jeremiah helped us bring our hay in, telling Papa he knew farmhands were scarce, and I thought it was a good thing, him seeing me be Papa’s right hand, him knowing I could do what needs doing. But now I am stuck inside mending and he hasn’t come and I ain’t so sure.
The skirt I am holding slips down to the floor and I can’t sit another second. I stab my needle into the pincushion and stand up. Betsy giggles when Mama asks me, ‘What is in your bonnet?’ but I just let her question fall like the curtain I keep pulling back and make for the door, banging on the way out.
I am off the stoop and across the yard, moving fast as I can through the snow, glad to escape Mama and Betsy. Chickens flap and squawk out of my way because they know better. At the barn, my hand stops on the rough cold metal handle of its sliding door. I can’t believe the voices coming from inside.
‘It’s good wages, Sir,’ Jeremiah says, and my hand won’t move on the handle, not for all the world, no matter how fast my heart pounds, not before I know why he’s come. ‘A hundred and fifty dollars for joining plus regular pay after.’
‘Seems to me there’s a damn sight more important things than money,’ Papa says, high and mighty like he knows best.
‘Well, Sir’—Jeremiah uses his polite voice—‘a man can’t live without money. I aim to buy us a farm, supposing you agree. The Army’s paying.’
I want to laugh to hear him say us after waiting two days. After I’ve been convincing myself I was wrongheaded for all my wishes about Jeremiah.
‘I’m sure Rosetta’ll have something to say about that,’ Papa says. ‘She knows every farm in this valley.’
‘We’ve got ideas, Sir. Rosetta’s the only girl I ever met who cares about farming the same as me.’
It’s like Papa don’t hear Jeremiah talking proud about me. He asks, ‘You ain’t got the money to support a wife, why you aiming to get yourself one?’
There’s a funny strangling sound before Jeremiah says, ‘It was mostly Rosetta’s idea, Sir, getting married now. Before—’
Whatever tool Papa’s working on fixing clatters to the ground. He’s laughing. ‘Well, don’t she just beat all. Been near to the death of her Mama, but that girl’s the best farmhand I ever had. Can’t imagine hiring a better one, but I suppose if it’s her idea I can’t say no.’
‘Thank you, Sir.’
Hearing how Jeremiah has spoken for me, I lose track of my feet and slip right there on the icy snow, clutching at the barn door handle to keep from falling.
There’s footsteps in the hay and I scramble, running to look like I’ve come straight from the house, throwing off my dirty apron and shoving it beneath the lilacs that are no more than sticks jutting straight up out of the snow.
I skid on the stoop’s frosted planks as the barn door opens. Out walks Papa, clapping his hand on Jeremiah’s shoulder. Jeremiah is taller than Papa and his legs don’t look so spindly no more. He is wearing his Sunday best to come calling, nicer than anything my Papa has ever worn, but it don’t hide how his arms are thicker than Papa’s.
‘Rosetta,’ Papa calls when he sees me shivering. ‘Looks like you got yourself a nice young man here, says you’re after marrying him and now he’s trying to make it right by asking my permission.’
When he climbs the steps, I tell him what I told Jeremiah, the thing he will understand most, not all the things I’m feeling.
‘I don’t want to be no spinster, Papa. And if he goes off—’
Papa squints. Then his hand is on my head, messing my hair, and he says, ‘Then I guess we might as well tell your Mama, ease her mind on one account anyway.’ He points at Jeremiah, opening the kitchen workroom door. ‘You stay for dinner.’
It is warm inside and we three squeeze in among the butter churn and the washtub and Mama’s spinning wheel. Jeremiah’s heat is behind me and I turn to smile at him, his ears looking wind-chapped when he says he’ll stay.