—
“You didn’t have to hurt him,” they told me later, the chattering women on the stairs. “You shouldn’t have led him on if you didn’t want him to come.” I never replied but lifted my chin and pressed my lips hard together. Underneath the shield of my apron, my hand curled into a fist.
“You will never get married this way,” Nellie said too, with her head bent over the mending in her kitchen. “I worry for you, Bella, I do. What happened to you back home? I know there was an attack, but no one ever told me more than that.”
I shrugged and bent my head over the torn pants in my lap; the needle went in, came out. “There’s no use talking about that now—and don’t you go asking Mother.” It would not do if Nellie knew. I had left it all behind.
Edvard from Bergen never spoke to me again, knowing perhaps that I would gladly have followed those scissors with something worse. I thought about it often: what I would do to him if I could. Sometimes it was Anders I saw in my head: skin slashed and teeth crushed. It was seething, that anger, restless and aching.
I liked Edvard well enough before that night, and had I been anything like Nellie, he could have been a good fit for me. I would gladly have taken him into my bed and never known his true nature—and neither would he have known mine. I did not want that for myself, though, being a carpenter’s wife. Did not want to be another woman on those stairs. I thought of that night by the lake while lying on the bench at night, and knew I was not done with the spite. I had survived—just to spite—and I would rise in spite as well. Even though he would never know it, I would marry even better than Anders, only to prove that I could.
It would have been easy to slip in those early days, falter and settle for less. Those scissors in the drunk man’s thigh was the best thing that could have happened to me. None of the Norwegian men who danced and drank in the backyards would even look at me after that. I had to look elsewhere to find a husband, and I had ideas.
11.
Nellie
It was unfortunate what happened with those scissors, especially since Bella had still not made many friends at the tenements. There was talk on all the stairs and rowdy laughter, and whatever hope there had been of seeing her settled with a man from our circle was waning by the day as the word spread. Who would want a wife who had bodily attacked a suitor and lodged a sharp weapon in his flesh? Not only would he live in peril of suffering the same fate, but he would also have to endure a lifetime of ridicule from the other men.
It was just how it was, and there was nothing to do for it.
For the longest time I thought that bloody night on the bench was what had sent Bella running to church.
It turned out I was wrong.
John and I belonged to the Norwegian Lutheran Church, and Bella joined us there when she arrived, but we were not zealous Christians. Our days did not have the hours for it, and though we said grace and John did a little loud reading from the Bible on Sunday nights, our concerns were mundane ones. We were at peace with God and aimed to keep it that way, but he did not fill our every waking moment. I wished for a house of our own and healthy children, and had little time to worry about our souls.
Little Brynhild had been pious at various times as a child, but I had never thought it anything more than a way of getting by. She had an excellent mind—it was almost uncanny the way she could recite Bible verses from memory, or remember whole passages of text having read them only once. It served her well in school and in church too. For a child who did not always know how to behave in an endearing way, who was often teased and taunted, her ability was a strength, and it made her appear very serious about the Bible—as if she had read the whole book ten times over, when all she had done was glance at it once. The adults made a game of it, outside the church on Sundays, asking her questions and having her recite verses from memory. People like that sort of dedication in a child; they think it is sweet.
That was why it made sense to me that Bella would seek out the church to find solace after the whole scissors affair. Religion had helped her rise before when people had given her a hard time. A vast knowledge of verses and psalms could come in handy even as an adult. I knew she would not have a problem getting along with the very religious, black-clad matrons of the congregation; her sullenness could easily be read as a sort of piousness. It did not suit me, though, this sudden interest in the church.
My back was worse than ever after my daughter Olga’s birth, and some days I had to lean on furniture just to move around in my apartment. Bella being out all the time to meet with her new friends doing all sorts of charitable work was inconvenient at best, and her occupying the bench meant that I could not ask someone else to stay with me either. I needed her at home, and told her so, just a few weeks after my bed rest ended.
“Maybe I need God right now,” she said in reply. “Maybe I find it hard to be new in this country with no husband or children of my own. Maybe it is a comfort to me to hear God’s words in my mother tongue.” She was sitting on a chair by the table, sorting through my needles. She was wearing a dark brown cotton dress, and her hair was hidden under a graying headscarf. Behind her on the stove, the water in the pot slowly came to a boil.
“We hear them well enough on Sundays.” I was in pain and my mood was dark. “I don’t see why you have to be so involved. They can care for the orphans just fine without you. Those old women with no chicks in the nest have nothing better to do with their time.” I was biting my lip against the ache. I had taken a powder, but it had yet to work. My hand was busy rocking the cradle, where little Olga blinked against the light.
“It’s a charitable thing to do. Not everyone has a kind mother like little Olga here.” Bella smiled and reached out to pat the worn cradle. “They need young bodies with strength and conviction. The older women can’t do that much.”
“My back hasn’t been good since the birth. I sure could use your help too.” I hated the sullen complaint in my own voice.
“If John earned a little more, you wouldn’t have to work so much.” Her eyebrows rose a little.
“He earns what he earns and works late hours to keep us all fed.” It just was not fair to lay it on him.
“What would you have me do then, Nellie? Stay at home every day as your maid?” She did not wait for my reply but rose from the chair and went to fetch the boiling water. It would go into a dishpan on the table and be used to clean our dirty cups.