“So if you and Olaf come to money and move into a fine home, you would still be shit?” I could not help but tease her.
“Sure.” She paused the churning and tossed her head. “I am not ashamed of where I come from; the smell of goat will stay with me till the day I die, even if I go to the grave dressed in silk.”
“Maybe it would feel different if you had the silk,” I said.
“Bertha has surely forgotten all about the goats,” said Laura. “She has covered up the stench with real perfume, I reckon.”
“It’s a gamble, that’s for sure,” I mused while pouring the water into a tub for rinsing. “Some of us do better over here while others do not, and it seems as if luck strikes at random. Brothers can be kings and paupers alike. You are lucky,” I said to Laura, “to have family who can help. It is easier then, if you have a place to start.”
“Your sister is lucky too, then,” said Laura. “She will have you to help her.”
“As if Nellie hasn’t done enough,” Clara muttered with her eyes on the churning water before her.
“Little Brynhild has worked hard at R?dde for years, and with everyone whispering about her. Now is her time to cross the ocean, and she has certainly earned her fare.”
“What are they whispering about?” Clara lifted her gaze to meet mine.
I shrugged again. “Who knows . . . I only know that it’s something. My family isn’t thought highly of, and words travel fast, even outside the valley.”
“People can be cruel.” Laura gave a sympathetic nod, as the scrubber dropped from her hand again—she was not a very fast worker.
“It has been years since that attack,” said Clara; “maybe she would have been fine back home.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “but maybe not.”
One more night, I thought. One more night and the worry that had lodged in the pit of my stomach would dissolve and be gone forever.
* * *
—
The train station was crowded and loud. All sorts of people were milling about in the domed entrance hall, some of them carrying large trunks or cases. A woman in a coat lined with fox fur and a hat that carried an assortment of floral bounty brushed shoulders with a crooked old woman with a thousand lines in her face. The latter shuffled toward the tracks with her head bent, her hair hidden by a knitted headscarf and a tattered shawl draped across her shoulders. A man in an expensive-looking suit sat on a bench reading a newspaper, next to a dark-haired family in simple garb who spoke among them what I believed to be Russian. Conductors and other officials rushed past in dark uniforms adorned with shiny buttons, neatly trimmed mustaches, and expressions that stated they were busy with important things—running late, perhaps. Young men sat behind wooden counters, along the tall walls of pale, polished stone and served the winding lines of travelers, counting coins and dispersing tickets.
Above them all, a clock in brass casing mounted on the wall told the time with ornate black arms. The smallest one, spindly and delicate, shivered a little every time it moved, counting down another second.
I could not see my sister yet, and the crowd was much too dense for me. I clung to John’s arm as he pulled me along through the throng. I did not used to be so unsettled by masses, but something had changed in me over the years. Perhaps it was married life that had made me such a sheltered thing. It protected me, yes, but hid me too, away from the noise and the churn of bodies that moved at all times on the city streets. After John had put a little gold on my finger, I no longer had to be a part of it all. I still worked as before but from the safety of my home. I rarely saw people outside our own little circle and barely met a soul that was not born in Norway such as myself. I found that it suited me, but it also made me weak. When faced with the train station’s clamor, expressed in a myriad of tongues, my heart beat faster and my skin turned slick. My mouth suddenly felt too dry to speak.
“How are you feeling?” John asked me, knowing very well of my weakness. “You’re not faint, are you?”
I shook my head, though I did feel a little dizzy. I did not want him to worry about me, though. “It is just the air,” I said. “It’s too hot, and the smell is bad.”
John laughed in his quiet way. “Not everyone who travels takes a bath before they board.”
I smiled a little too; it was true what he said. Of all the scents that mingled in the entrance hall, the one of sweaty, unwashed skin stood out, closely followed by a cloying reek of soot. When I looked down, I could tell that the slick, white floors were grimy with black and spattered with a mixture of tobacco and saliva. I took care to lift my skirt a little higher.
“I know where her train came in,” John said, having scanned a board on a wall beside one of the ticket stalls. A woman stood beside it, selling small bouquets of flowers from a tub. Lilacs mostly, and large, lush roses, finished off with bright blue bows. I wondered for a second if I should get some for Little Brynhild, but then I thought better of it. I did not truly have money to spend. I worried that we would not find her at the track, that she had gone in search of us and gotten lost—or even worse: that she had not been able to find the station in New York. That she had been robbed or otherwise prevented from boarding the train. It was a harsh world, and she had seen so very little of it.
The worry increased, grasped and held my heart, as we moved farther down the platform, stepping over discarded tickets, cigar butts, and sugar-stained paper bags, and did not see Little Brynhild anywhere. We passed by several tall columns where people with travel-weary faces crowded with their trunks; there was also a newspaper seller and a stooped old man who sold sticks of caramel, but I could not see my sister.
A sudden fear struck me: What if she had changed so much that I would not know her? What if the child I knew was completely erased from her features?
Just then, I caught sight of them: two young women standing by one of the thick columns with two worn leather trunks between them. I knew her at once, of course I did, but it still took me a second to reconcile the girl she had been with the woman she was and make them one person in my mind. She was tall—taller than I was. Her dark brown hair was pulled back from her brow and into a knot at the back of her head. She wore no headscarf. Her nose had grown a little bony, like mine, and her cheekbones rode high, like our father’s. She wore a dark blue coat, which I knew she had bought especially for the journey. She had written about it in her last letter. It was too expensive, but she could not resist treating herself to something new, have a little slice of what was to come: a new beginning—a fresh start, far away from ridicule and strife.