“Oh, she does, and she has a way with Rudolph. It is just hard to rely on her help, as I never know when she will be here or not.” Even as I said it, I felt guilty. The desire to protect her had always been strong—and over here, she had no one else to defend her. If I did not stand up for her, she would be all alone.
“It seems to me that you spend just as much time worrying about her now as before she arrived,” John said. “I had been hoping we could put that worry to rest now.”
“Well, I no longer worry that someone will attack her,” I said, and adjusted my head on the pillow. “I know that she is safe, and that’s something.”
“But do you get more rest now that she is with us?” He patted the swell of my belly through the blanket.
“Oh, I—” It seemed foolish now, how I had been thinking that my sister would be the answer to my plight. How I had imagined that she would care for me through the pregnancy, and thus increase my odds. I carried almost as much water as before, while she was out walking the streets, sucking on caramels. The bitterness swelled in me for a moment before I gently pushed it away.
It would serve no purpose.
10.
Bella
Every Saturday there were gatherings at the tenements with strong drink and fiddle players. Nellie was eager for me to go. “That’s how you’ll meet a nice husband. Dance a little, Bella, dance and drink and show yourself off!”
I did not mind the drinking so much, but I certainly was no dancer. I had never felt graceful spinning in someone’s arms, only awkward and dizzy, longing for it to end. I did go, though, because Nellie insisted. And I did want to meet a man and move out from the bench in Nellie’s kitchen, where the scent of cabbage and grease clung to everything, and the neighbors downstairs kept me up at night, yelling to each other in German. I just did not want to meet those men.
They were poor Norwegians like me, with no real prospects. Some of them came from the Norwegian countryside but many from the crowded cities too. They were workingmen with strong arms and very little wit. Some were hard drinkers, some quarrelsome and angry. They came to Chicago looking for work and settled in the boardinghouses, waiting for luck and a wife. The other unwed women thought them wonderful, spun in their arms like there was no tomorrow. They would be happy enough to marry of one of them and settle in some small apartment like Nellie’s.
Not I.
I only had to look to Nellie to see how well that went, and no matter how handsome those young men were. If I really was to prosper, I could not give in.
I had, after all, nearly married a farmer’s son back home, and was determined not to do any worse in America.
There was one man, though, a blond carpenter from Bergen. Three Saturday nights in a row, he plied me with drinks and wanted to hold my hand under the table. It was my own fault. I had grown tired of being considered strange; I figured it did me no service if I was to find a suitable husband, so I had taken it upon myself to learn how to flatter: be sweet, kind, and amiable. I watched the other young women at the gatherings and women out on the streets as well. Saw how they moved their lips and widened their eyes, how they gently touched and pretended to be coy. I had tried some of these tricks on Edvard, the carpenter, and to my utter surprise, it had worked. Before I knew it, I was tangled with him somehow, was expected to accept the drinks he poured me and hold his hand.
When he wanted to walk me home, I always said no.
Then one Saturday, the gathering was in Nellie’s backyard. Both she and John were there. She was spinning on the ground with her big belly, between rows of makeshift benches where her neighbors sat with their bottles, singing and cheering the dancers on. It was a dark night, but they had brought out lanterns, and the gentle lights obscured the squalor we all lived in, the dreary backyard and the outhouse—but they could not mask the stench.
Edvard too was there, of course, handsome, drunk, and impatient. When I went to use the outhouse, he followed me into the dark. He caught hold of my shoulder and spun me around to plant a kiss on my mouth. I gently pushed him away, told him to go back, and said I would be there shortly. I knew it would not do to make a fuss. I had handled drunk men before and did not think more of it.
When I came back, he had fallen asleep on a bench, a board on top of two barrels, and I let out a breath of relief. I was tired of it all, the noise and the people, and so I went upstairs to Nellie’s apartment to undress and make up my bed. The party was loud, even when I was inside, and I wondered how the children slept through it all.
Just when I had slipped under the woolen covers, the door to the apartment opened. At first I thought it was John; the only light in the kitchen came from the coals in the stove and the night around me was dark, but then I realized it could not be. The figure in the door, swaying on his feet, was far too tall for that.
“Bella.” Edvard stumbled onto the floor, crossed it in just a few strides, and then he was upon me.
“No.” I tried to push him off. He reeked of liquor and sweat.
He did not reply but tugged at my blanket; his forehead was creased, his breathing labored. I tried to laugh and pretend it was in jest, while I fought to pry his fingers off the covers. Then suddenly I could smell it again, the water of Selbu Lake lapping at the shore; I could feel the pebbles burrowing into my back and the pounding pain of a shattered tooth. “Stop,” I muttered between clenched jaws. “Stop it!”
He did not even hear me but kept pulling at the blanket. His breathing became even heavier than before. I was wriggling by then, trying to toss him off, but he was far too heavy.
He managed to wring the blanket from my hands and peeled it off my body. His knee landed between my legs.
“No.” I was firm. “No!”
“Why?” His weight was heavy upon me. “I can be sweet to you, Bella. You let me kiss you before.”
I did not answer, did not move at all while he kissed my neck and squeezed my breasts through my shift. The fear in me subsided some and turned into a cold sort of rage: Who was this man to think he could best me? I would never be at a man’s mercy again. My arm moved, dropped down to the floor where the basket of mending stood by the bench. My hand found the rim, felt its way through folds of fabric, rows of needles, spools of thread, and landed on the scissors at the bottom. I lifted them high in the air and he saw them gleam just as they came down, and he tried to escape by twisting around. The scissors went through the fabric of his pants and lodged in the backside of his thigh. They protruded there even after I let them go. He bellowed. I shouted. He got a hold of the scissors and pulled them out with a gush of blood. The door sprang open and John was there, Nellie too, and half the party. They led the wailing man outside with much fuss and looks in my direction. Not Nellie, though. She sat down on the lip of the bench, pulling up my covers. There was blood in my bed, on my hands. My poor jaw throbbed with ache, just as it did after the lake, though no blow had landed there this time.
“He tried to force me,” I muttered, “so I stabbed him.”
“Yes.” Nellie sounded faint. “Yes, I believe you did.”
* * *