After ten days at sea we poured off the ship in New York as a river of rats with matted coats and quivering whiskers. Our lungs expanded, breathing in America; our bellies groaned with hunger, but not for food, no. We washed from the docks and into the city, haggard-faced and reeking of brine, tails whipping as we scurried down the streets, hauling our heavy trunks along. We would devour it all—yes, we would—have our share of fortune’s blessings delivered on our plates.
I stood on the pier, in the midst of the churn of bodies, waiting for Sigrid to join me. I looked up at the sky then, pale and clear, and wondered just how far how far I would get, how high I would climb toward that sky.
This was the land where I would thrive.
7.
Nellie
Chicago, 1881
The day before Little Brynhild arrived, my friend Clara, and Laura, who was new in the building, helped me with the laundry so I would not have to fret about it on my sister’s first day in Chicago.
My small apartment was hot and steamy; several zinc tubs littered the floor between the table and the stove, intercepted by heaps of sorted laundry. We had heated water, filled the tubs, drizzled in soda crystals, and were at it on our knees, with plungers and scrubbers. Our skirts and aprons were soon soaked through, and all children banished to Clara’s apartment, where her oldest daughter looked after them all.
It was filthy work, as most of those who left their laundry with me were unmarried Norwegian men who lived in cramped quarters. Some of them had landladies who offered to take in wash, but they found that their clothes were as grimy as before upon their return. Others lived in such squalor that no service was available, and so they brought it to me: shirts stained with tobacco and liquor, pants covered in dust and flecked with gravy, undershirts so ripe that the scent lingered in the air long after the garments were washed and hung, and underthings reeking of urine.
It was good money, though, and I could not afford to say no. We had sent many envelopes across the ocean since the first time we heard of Little Brynhild’s distress, and though we did not feel it keenly, it had meant that I sometimes had to choose the poorer meat, and that the house of our own that we dreamed of for so long had to wait just a little while longer. I never thought of it as a kindness, however, but more of a thing that had to be done. Little Brynhild could not stay in Norway, it was as simple as that—and I had to do what I could to make sure that she escaped. The way Clara talked about it, though, you would think I were a saint.
“No one ever helped me,” she said as her strong hands curved around the plunger and set to churn the water. “We are three sisters who made it across, and we all paid for our own fare.” She blew a stray black curl away from her forehead. She had stopped wearing her headscarf when she moved to Chicago, which seemed to me highly impractical. I sometimes found long hairs in the food when she served me a slice of bread or a bowl of soup. It did not help that she pinned it up; the hairs got loose anyway.
“We got a little help,” said Laura. She was a tall, fair woman from the north of Norway, so skinny that her pregnant belly seemed awkward on her lanky frame, like a sudden hill on a smooth plain. Nothing like mine: a curve resting upon my hips, gently rounded and snug. I loved that belly, and could not help but touch it as often as I was able. At night, when my husband and son were asleep, I would pull up my nightgown and let my hands follow the rise and dip while I closed my eyes and wondered what was inside. It had been such a long time since one of my pregnancies had lasted enough to show. They had too often ended in aches and blood. This time, though—this time it was different.
I was careful not to hope for too much, however. Twice I had carried to term, only to find that the child was weak and did not live. First, it was a girl, the year before Rudolph. Second, it had been a boy, the year that Rudolph was two. The same year I was first made aware of Little Brynhild’s plight.
I remembered how the thought had taken root in me then, that if I only had a little help—even if just for a while—perhaps my body would be stronger, and the children that grew in me too. If I only had another pair of hands to help me out, I could rest more and the babies would thrive. There had been several disappointments since then, and I often forgot about this hope that had hatched after the first letter of distress—it was not why I wanted to bring my sister over, but as the day of her arrival drew nearer, that butterfly of hope came fluttering back again. Perhaps it would be easier this time, because I would not be alone with it all.
“Little Brynhild has paid her share,” I said aloud, even if Clara already knew that. She only said such things because she felt it was wrong for John and me to spend so much on my sister’s fare when we needed comforts of our own. “Who helped you?” I asked Laura, mostly to have her talking. She had just moved in on the ground floor with her husband and two daughters, and we did not know much about her yet.
“My brother,” she replied from her kneeling position. Her hands, buried deep in the tub before her on the floor, stopped moving and the scrubber rose to the surface, drifting between oily sheets of grime. “Ulrik’s sister helped too. Both of them have been here for years. Bertha, Ulrik’s sister, keeps a store—can you believe it? She sells ribbons, buttons, and such to wealthy ladies, and that would certainly never have happened at home. She is the daughter of a tenant, same as us . . . Bertha has offered for us to stay with her as well, but I don’t know.” She lifted an arm to wipe it across her damp brow, leaving a streak of filth, which traveled from her skin and onto the graying headscarf. “She drinks tea from china now, while we just have the tin. My daughters aren’t well-behaved enough in her eyes.”
Clara nodded with a knowing expression, still working the plunger in another tub; her face had become flushed from the churning, but only a little. She was as used to hard work as I was. “It happens sometimes over here, when a person comes to money. They quickly forget where they came from and put on all sorts of airs.” She snorted her disapproval.
“Well, they did come here to escape all that was wrong before,” I said as I stood by the stove, waiting for another batch of water to heat up enough to use. It was the last we had brought in, and soon we would have to brave the stairs again, up and down between the yard and the third floor, carrying heavy buckets from the pump. I was not looking forward to it, and figured Laura was not either; she was about as far along as me.
“That is no reason to look down at honest people,” said Clara.
“Maybe they’re afraid that if they are too friendly, people will ask them for money,” I suggested. “That could certainly happen.” I knew well how desperation could make people become unpleasant. I only had to look to my own kin back at St?rsetgjerdet.
“I don’t see why you would defend them.” Clara rarely defended anyone at all but seemed to find flaws even among the righteous. “Shit will be shit,” she said, “no matter how much you scrub it.”