“Why settle for less?” I murmured with my head bent over the work, hiding my face from her view.
“Just don’t hope for too much.”
Nellie had been foolish to marry John Larson. I thought she could have made a better choice. Nellie herself spoke of him as if he were a blessing, and I despised her a little for that. She was wrong about what she said, that he would not have had her in Norway. She could have married just as well back home, had she only been a little clever about it. There was no need to go to Chicago to have a man like John Larson. Then again, she said she cared for him, but I thought she could have cared for someone else just as well.
I would not spoil my chances, though, would not be foolish like her. Traveling to America had only been the first step; the next one would be to move out from the cramped apartment, leave the restless nights on the bench in the kitchen, the tiresome mending and the heavy wash behind.
When I had some time to myself, I liked to walk around the city and just look at the people, the shops, and the traffic. I had seen much poverty in my life but never such wealth as I did in Chicago, where gleaming horses pulled shiny carriages with ladies in hats that carried whole forests of feathers and flowers. I saw beautiful houses and gardens bursting with green behind wrought-iron gates, department stores glittering with lights and smelling of rose and magnolia. It was so close and yet so far from the Norwegian neighborhood by Milwaukee Avenue, where the children ran in streets filled with muck and poked at dead animals with sticks.
I knew where I would rather be.
I used whatever money I had to myself to buy sweets. I had never seen treats like the ones they had in Chicago: sticks of brown caramel and hard pieces of candy in all sorts of colors. I felt like the woman that I ought to be then, traipsing down the sidewalk, sucking on it. It was as if the sweetness seeped into the rest of my body and made me feel light and happy. Rich even, walking there in my worn headscarf and heavy shawl with the taste of luxury coating my tongue.
We never had much candy in Selbu.
I brought home newspapers and read them all through even if I did not know the language. That was the very purpose of it, to force myself to learn. I used an English Bible too, since I knew the meaning of those texts. It did not take me very long; I have always been a quick study. Soon I could speak and read English some, and a new world opened to me then. Why was my sister content to let her husband speak for her? I ignored her when she scoffed at me as I sat there, poring over my Bible. Marriage, I decided, had made her both lazy and slow.
She did talk a lot, though, in the language she did know. Every day she sat out on the stairs with a basket of mending, chattering with the others, sipping weak coffee and threading needles. How could they say so much about so little? They spoke of their husbands and children, the weather and the costs, and the peculiar German family downstairs. They spoke of who had arrived and who had gone, and giggled about the men at the boardinghouses: young and carefree, easy on the eyes. They spoke of who would marry and who would die—they spoke of a new Norway in America, only better than the land we left behind.
They were all so foolish.
9.
Nellie
Ithought Bella would help you with the laundry. Where has she gone to this time?” Clara blocked my way on the stairs, coming from the yard with a water bucket of her own. Her green eyes sparkled with resentment.
I only shrugged, as I had no good answer to give her. Bella had pulled on her blue coat and slipped out the door shortly after breakfast. I was so surprised that I did not even think to ask just where she was going. This had happened several times in the weeks since she arrived, and no matter what I said to make her understand that I needed her at home, it simply did not help.
“Well, let me carry the water for you, then.” Clara reached for the bucket in my hand. “It will not do to have you running up and down these stairs with that belly.”
I knew she was right. My dress was straining under the apron and I often lost my breath when working hard. I was happy to feel all the kicks and tumbles within, though; it seemed like a healthy baby. Its antics often kept me awake at night, but I did not care one jot. I would rather have it spinning in my belly than feel it fall silent in there.
Clara put down her own bucket and started for the yard again. I followed her down the stairs, tugging at my apron as I often did when uncomfortable. “She only wants to see the city,” I said to her back. She was wearing a blue-and-white-striped cotton dress under the stained apron; her dark curls were pinned to her head as usual. “She can read English now—did I tell you?”
“Yes, yes,” Clara murmured. “I am sure she is bright as a button.”
“She just doesn’t understand how badly I need her help.”
“She is a woman past twenty, Nellie, not a girl of ten.”
“Still, though, she just doesn’t understand—”
“Is she a little slow?” Clara glanced over her shoulders as she hurried down the steps.
“No,” I said, suddenly offended. “I just told you she is bright. She reads—”
“Yes, yes, you said.”
“She is helping with all the children—Lottie likes her a lot.”
“My daughter is too young to know any better.” Clara strode across the yard with the empty bucket dancing in her grasp. The set of her shoulders told me she was angry. “All these years saving up for her, and this is what you get? A sullen creature who only eats and sleeps and will not work? I’d say you have gotten yourself a poor bargain, Nellie.”
Suddenly I felt a little angry too. Who was Clara to have such strong opinions of my sister? Who was she to judge?
When Clara spun around by the water pump in the corner of the yard, her forehead was creased with lines. “How about her showing you some gratitude? You sacrificed a lot to bring her here, and you are in dire need of help! Your births have never been easy—you ought to take it slow and not run about as you used to . . . With another woman in the house that should have been possible to achieve—but no! She is out taking in the sights! It is not right, Nellie!” The bucket clattered on the flagstones when she dropped it and set to work the heavy lever on the pump. “I know you care for her and that you want to help her, but what if she does not help you in turn? Is it even worth it if she cannot bring up your goddamn water?”