I wondered if the act of butchering excited him some, or if he had done it so many times, it meant nothing at all. If it was only me, his new wife, who made him so inclined to tumble in the hay. I did not mind much either way, but I thought it took some bloodlust to be as skilled a butcher as him.
As we closed the barn doors and went inside, where my Jennie was watching the baby, I thought of what a treasure this man was, who could teach me something useful and new.
* * *
—
I had all I wanted then: a man I had chosen for his kindness and skills, and five young girls who called me Mama. I had the house and the land, a barn filled with seeds, and plenty of healthy livestock. My pantry was bottomless, crammed with milk and butter, eggs, preservatives, and fine cured ham. Even the scrawny cat grew fat with cream.
I had done well for a poor girl from Norway.
All week long, we worked hard to get the farm running. We planned and hired men to work, and sought avenues for our produce. We went to church on Sundays and met with all our neighbors. They were humble people, farmers like us. Honest people, living off the land. It was just what I had wanted: a healthy, wholesome life.
I began gathering the children in my bed before they went to sleep, as a way of coming together after the busy days on the farm—much as my own mother had done when I was a child, out on the stone step at St?rsetgjerdet. Sometimes I slipped the girls a treat, we played a game, or I told them stories. Sometimes we just rested together: Myrtle and Lucy with their heads on my shoulders, Jennie and Swanhild with their arms around the younger girls. By the foot of the bed lay Prince, the collie puppy we had bought as a guard dog who turned out to be more of a lap dog. Who was I to resist his pleading brown eyes and the girls’ sweet begging? Prince, too, found room in the bed.
I thought to myself in those moments of bliss that this was all that counted: to have my girls happy and content, their sweet breaths against my neck. As far as Myrtle and Lucy were concerned, I was their natural mother, and they would never ever know otherwise. The two of them were mine through and through, and the love they felt for me was not tainted by questions or doubts. Jennie often thought of her natural mother, and Swanhild had only just lost hers, but the two I had raised from the day they were born carried no such scars. They were my angels, my all, and I swore in those moments of closeness on the pillows that I would always protect them from harm.
* * *
—
The farm had to earn; that was the only cloud on my otherwise bright horizon. It cost to set it up and it cost to have men working. If we could not make it pay, my money would be gone in no time at all. Despite all our efforts, I felt it moved too slowly. The money disappeared never to return, and I found myself sitting up at night in my new, elegant parlor, looking through the open door to the dining room, where straight-backed chairs with black velvet seats lined the polished table. I felt it then, deep in my heart, how dearly I wanted to keep it all: the husband, the house, and the land. This new me, Bella Gunness—Belle, as they called me in La Porte, because their tongues were lazy or they somehow misheard—was a woman of considerable means. She would never eat gruel or herring. I made a silent pact with the house in those nights, that beautiful old whorehouse with suicide in its walls, as damaged and bruised as myself. If it kept me, I would keep it, and we would be like sisters to each other. I would do what it took to protect her, always, and liked to think that she would do the same for me.
It put a strain on me, this pondering about money. I got angry with Peter when he spent needlessly, although I did not show it. This man was not like Mads; he would not be beaten or scolded and I had to curb my tongue. Instead, I sat alone at night, thinking and drinking his whiskey. I found that even if Peter treated me well, he did not respect my money.
Nothing to do for that, though, but hope that Brookside would spit the investments back in my lap. Still, it made me feel restless and angry to know that my cash dwindled in the bank. I found myself filling the pantry again with far more than we could eat. A rank scent of mold hit me whenever I opened the door. The situation made me careless too; maybe that was why it happened . . .
Baby Jennie, Peter’s younger daughter, had been sickly from the start, and she never seemed to heal but neither to get any worse. Her skin was red with rashes that her sharp, thin fingernails scratched, leaving red swellings and bloody marks. No ointment or salve could cure her, and her belly was large with gas. She ought to have gone with her mother, I think. She was born with a foot in the grave. Peter did not see that but kept smiling down at the girl, shushing and stroking her trembling limbs while she screamed herself wet and red. He rocked her cradle while smoking his pipe and hummed to the suffering child.
I used laudanum drops sometimes, and Peter agreed to that. He too wanted to give the child some peace, a good night’s sleep to conserve what little strength she had. It might have been too much—but I did not mean for it to be. The girl would have loved me as a mother had she lived, and I had no reason to harm her.
Whatever my intentions were, the girl died—and her father was not pleased.
29.
Peter kept visiting the small coffin laid out in the parlor to cry over Baby Jennie’s blue, waxen body. He dried his eyes with his handkerchief and dulled the sorrow with whiskey. I had not anticipated that; I had thought him a stronger man, accustomed as he was to death and grief. I did what I could to ease his loss and baked cookies and cakes, made roasts and nourishing soups. None of my cookery seemed to work, though, and my husband grew pale and thin before me. He went to the barn and did his work, but I could tell his heart was not in it. It puzzled me how broken he was, and one morning, after I had served him breakfast in the kitchen—ham and sausages, cheese and bread—I sat down before him and asked:
“Why is this so hard on you, dear husband? Children die, that’s the way of things. She is not the first child you have lost, so why is it so hard this time?”
He did not answer at first, just stirred his coffee with a dainty little spoon that looked spindly and fragile in his large hand. “Tell me again of the morning she died.”
“Well.” I placed my hands in my lap, on top of the filthy apron. “She’d a bad night, you know that. She could not rest. She continued wailing all morning while you were away. Then she finally grew quiet, and I checked on her. To me, it looked as if she slept at that time. I’m certain that she did, because she made small noises in her sleep. I left her to it then, because I had covered her hands with those mittens I made, and was certain she wouldn’t bloody herself. If she woke up I would hear it at once, as I never strayed far from the kitchen.”