We had been married barely a year when bad news arrived in an envelope with my brother Peder’s handwriting on the front. I had diligently written home ever since I came to America, telling my parents of my good marriage and lovely house, and had received replies in Olina’s sloppy scrawls. I had never written to my brother, though, and never received a letter from him, which was why I knew at once that something was amiss. I stood on the floor in my freshly scoured kitchen and tore open the envelope while preparing myself for the blow that was sure to follow. I quickly scanned the ink on the page: Mother was dead just after Christmas. She had suffered a chest pain that would not go away, and passed on quite suddenly in her bed. Father had not noticed until morning.
“He was drunk for sure,” I told Nellie when she came to see me later that week. Her daughter, Olga, was playing with a deck of cards by the end of the scrubbed kitchen table. “He would have noticed if her heart gave out if he hadn’t been drunk.”
“Even if he had, what good would it have done? Father could never afford a doctor.” Nellie dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “I so wish I could have seen her to the grave, don’t you?”
“I wouldn’t go back even for that,” I told her, truthfully enough, “but I hope he wasn’t drunk at the grave site.”
“Peder would have kept an eye on him.” Nellie was still crying. I was not. I was angry.
“What good did he ever do her? She lived such a miserable life—”
“Don’t you blame this on Father, Bella. He has his weaknesses, but Mother was old and had lived a hard life. It was just her time to go—”
“Did you know he didn’t marry her before she’d lost our first sister—do you remember her talking about that child?”
“Yes, she still lived with her parents when she had her.” Nellie lowered the handkerchief. “She and Father married a month after she died.”
“Why would she do a thing like that?” I poured us more brandy. “She could have gotten away then, when the child was dead. Why would she marry him after that?”
“Oh, people would still talk. That child wasn’t gone just because it was dead.” Nellie sipped from her glass. “Perhaps she loved him once.”
“Young and foolish.” I snorted.
“We should be glad for it,” Nellie saw fit to remind me. “We would not sit here if she hadn’t married him.”
“She settled for nothing at all.”
“But she had us, her children, and that’s something.”
“It’s certainly more than I have.” Mother’s death had left an ache in me: a twinge in my chest like an open wound. A hole in the soil, next to a root.
“You are still young and have years to try.” Nellie bent forth in her chair and helped Olga gather the cards. The girl smiled up at her with Mother’s eyes. I wanted to tell my sister then, about the damage done by the lake, but the words would not come; they slipped and escaped like tadpoles in a pond. Soon they were all gone.
“I can’t stand it anymore,” I said instead, “to see other women with their children. Even the thinnest, meanest woman at church has a brood of her own. People like her for it. They think her children are sweet and keep asking her about them.” I had fretted over my lack of children before, but never had I felt it as keenly as I did after Mother passed away. I kept thinking about that grave in the woods, as if the fresh loss opened the door to the other, and I did not quite know which one I was mourning. Maybe I mourned them both.
I was angry for what had been taken from me.
“People do that,” Nellie said, referring to the congregation. “It’s easy to talk about children.”
“Well, they don’t ask me, because I don’t have any little girls to show off.” I emptied my glass in one swift motion.
* * *
—
It bothered me to see mothers on the sidewalks, leading their young ones by the hand. It bothered me to hear wailing babies through open windows, and see a woman’s hand adjust a young boy’s collar in a carriage passing by. I hated how the little ones looked upon their mothers with love. I came to believe that was all that I wanted; for a child’s eyes to look at me like that. I wanted that love the other women had, that innocent adoration. What had those women ever done to have it delivered to them so effortlessly? What had Nellie ever done to have her belly swell time and again? Why could I not have the same?
On late nights when Mads was at work, I sometimes worried if God saw me after all and was punishing me for that poisoned dram. Then I remembered all the blood after the lake, and the thought that I was broken inside. I did not worry about God then.
The house around me was quiet—so quiet. No child’s sweet breath filled the night. Still, I sometimes thought I could hear the sounds of small feet crossing the floors, or a tinkling laughter in my ear. Ghosts of the children I could have had, if I had not lain down with the farmer’s son. I thought of Anders often in those days, while drowning my sorrows in expensive brandy and rubbing my jaw, which had never truly healed. I wanted to kill him all over again for the damage he had caused me. I felt regret that he was no longer alive. I should have done it slower, prolonged his agony further—or I should have done it more quickly, using my bare hands to extinguish his life. I should have made it bloody and painful: extracting his teeth and molesting his gut, just as he had done to me. I had been too kind to merely slip him rat poison, when what he had done to me had left me forever barren. My hatred simmered but had nowhere to go—the man was already dead, and no power on this earth could undo the damage done.
I raised a glass to the devil in those nights, huddled in my shawl at the kitchen table. I prayed that Anders was with him, facing eternal torment.
Soon I grew tired of the cooking and the housekeeping. Grew tired of making cakes. I grew tired of the church as well—all that exhausting humility. The house, which had seemed such a treasure trove at first, seemed to have lost all luster. The blue-painted walls in the kitchen seemed grimy, as if covered by a fine layer of dust. The wine-colored upholstery of my new chairs seemed tarnished like beef left out too long. Even the lilacs in the backyard seemed to fade before me, drained of both color and scent. No matter how often I swept the floors, debris always found its way in. I was sick of the somber, dark dresses I wore, the plain cross around my neck. I looked for other things to wear in plum-colored satin and emerald wool. I bought myself hats with lush velvet roses and feathers from rare and colorful birds. Things like those I had dreamed of while crossing the sea to this land. Instead of scrubbing out the pantry, I walked around in the city and stopped for expensive hot chocolate and tea.
“You’ll bring us into ruin.” Mads shook his head. He had a folded newspaper in his hand. His white undershirt was clean and neat; the suspenders hung off his shoulders. I was at the table in the parlor, my parcels laid out on the polished wood. I did not answer but looked at him while my fingers worked with lengths of ribbons and folds of soft cotton. “What happened to the kind and simple woman I married?”
“What happened to you?” I looked him in the eyes. “Since when did you talk to your wife in that way? Have I not cooked for you, scrubbed your floors, and aired your slippers? Why would you deny me a few luxuries of my own?”