She had not seen us yet but was speaking to the woman before her; lithe and blond, it had to be Sigrid. The latter did not reply to whatever was being said but seemed to hang on to Little Brynhild’s every word, her lips slightly parted as in wonderment.
I was not able to hold back anymore. “Little Brynhild!” I called for her and let go of my husband’s arm to run toward her the best that I could. “Little Brynhild!” I was not worried about the crowd anymore but lifted my hand in a wave as I ran. My cheeks were already aching from smiling; the relief burst like a bubble in my chest, mingling with the joy of her arrival.
She looked up when she heard her name and scanned the crowd with a narrowed gaze, as if squinting against the sun. She looked a little tired, as everyone did after the journey, with dark shadows under her eyes and skin an unhealthy, grayish pallor. She smiled when she saw me; her lips split and lifted, but she did not come toward me. She just stood there with her hands clasped on her belly and watched me arrive.
“I am so happy you are here.” I felt tears coming on when I threw my arms around her neck and felt her cool cheek press against my own. “Finally,” I muttered. “Finally!”
She embraced me in turn and patted my back. She had to bend down a little, as she was so tall. “Yes,” she said when she parted. “Here I am at last.” She sounded calmer than expected, more composed. “I am so happy to be here,” she said, as she took my hand and squeezed it gently with callused fingers. She did not look so happy, though; her dark blue eyes did not twinkle with delight but seemed almost cold when she looked at me.
She was probably just tired—who could blame her?
Then her gaze slid away, just as when she was a child. She could never look another in the eye for very long.
“Let’s get you home,” I whispered in a voice thick with feelings, just as John arrived and reached out his hand to greet his sister-in-law for the very first time. “Meet my little sister,” I said to him with pride. “John, this is Little Brynhild.”
“Bella,” she corrected me. “My name is Bella now.”
8.
Bella
Ihad expected Chicago to be different, and told Nellie so, sitting in her apartment mending rough-woven work clothes with tiny needles. “It reminds me of home.” It should not have done so; there was nothing there that looked like St?rsetgjerdet. The tenement building was three stories high, and the single window looked out on clotheslines, brick, and sky. Inside, it was cramped but far prettier than home, with a high ceiling and papered walls, and a proper stove for cooking. John and Nellie even had a bedroom, albeit a small one, with an additional window that looked out on the backyard, a cramped space crowded with outhouses and sheds where dirty children ran wild. The women in the building met on the landings of the stairs that climbed the outside of the wall, peeling vegetables, mending or folding clothes while they chatted and called out to their children down there: blond girls in tattered skirts and ungainly young boys in caps and suspenders wearing nothing at all on their feet. Still, it reminded me of home somehow—perhaps it was the stench of poverty itself.
“It’s nothing like home.” Nellie pursed her lips and squinted at her needle. “I am married now, I have a new child on the way, and we keep this apartment. It’s more than I would’ve had at home, where no one wanted to marry a poor girl with far too many bruises. This place has been good to me. I mend clothes now instead of shoveling muck—”
“But you don’t even speak the language, Nellie. How do you manage?”
“I have no need for it. John does all the talking with strangers. I only see Norwegians and Danes around here anyway, and they understand me just fine.”
“I would still like to learn, though.”
She shrugged in the chair opposite mine, stretching out her legs on the floor. She had a rug there, woven in shades of gray and blue. She also had crocheted white curtains in the windows and fringed edgings on the open shelves that were crammed with colorful boxes and mismatched pieces of china. The room smelled of old food and smoke, but the table between us shone from vigorous polishing and an oil lamp in the ceiling glimmered with brass. I could see how she thought she had done well.
“You always did like to learn.” Nellie gave me a thin smile. “You always had to know it all. Just don’t get too clever. No one wants to marry you then.”
“How come?” I asked, to tease her. I already knew why that was.
“No man wants to be challenged by his wife.” Her gaze, so much like my own, met mine. It was almost the only similarity between us. Nellie was tall as well but scrawny like Mother; hardships had drawn lines in her face. She was thirteen years older than I was, and looked like it could have been more. She had married late and this child was her fourth, but only one had lived past the age of two and was now a lively boy of seven. “You already know what you ought to know.” She pointed at me with the needle. “Cooking, mending, cleaning, farming—”
“I didn’t come here to be a farmer’s wife.” I pursed my lips and threw out my arms. My fingers still clutched the needle, and the red thread went taut between my hand and the garment, humming in the air like a thin cut.
“I know that.” Her voice became a little softer. “I just don’t want you to hope for things you cannot have. Even here, a young woman can only achieve so much.”
“I just don’t want to settle for less than I can get.”
She shook her head and sighed, looking much like our mother in that moment with the plaid headscarf hiding her hair from view. “Mother always said that teacher filled your head with nonsense.”
“No need to blame him. My thoughts are all my own.” I took the heavy scissors from the table and cut the spindly thread. Down on the floor, we had sheets soaking in tubs and later we would be at them with the plungers. Then we would carry more water upstairs and start preparing John’s dinner. My hands were never idle in Chicago.
“I worry sometimes, Bella.” Nellie used the name I had chosen, and the sound of it sent a soft tingle down my back. “You never seem to be satisfied. Not even when your belly is full and you have a bed all to yourself.”
“I could have ten beds to myself, and a girl to cook my meals, if I had the money.”
“Why would you want that? Isn’t one bed enough?”
“What would I do if I lost that one bed? I wouldn’t have a bed at all, then.”
“One bed all to yourself is more than you had at home.”
“But we’re not there anymore, and this place is supposed to be different.”
Nellie glanced up at me over her sewing. “When you meet a man it’ll be fine, I’m sure. You can stomach more than you think with a husband by your side.”
I shrugged and looked at her sore, red hands, “If I had a little more than just enough, I wouldn’t have to worry at all.”
“Keep your fingers crossed for a man of means, then.”
“And in need of a wife to steer him right.” I added a smile to my statement.
Nellie chuckled. “Poor man.” She put the shirt down in her lap and stretched her arms.