“Had you given her anything to quiet her down?” His voice was as hollow as a winter storm.
“Nothing more than usual. I think it was all God’s work, Peter. I think it was he who called her home. Little Jennie was always too good for this world, such a little angel. Just as my Caroline was. I know what it’s like to lose a child, my dear, but we will get through this, the two of us together.”
Peter still looked ashen, but he nodded.
“She must be buried,” I reminded him, and touched his knee gently. The coffin was still in the house, closed but unburied, surrounded by paper angels her sisters and I had made. He just could not seem to make up his mind. “Did you grieve like this for all your children?”
“It was some time since I lost one. I cannot recall how I felt then.”
“Jennie was sick from the start. I was hoping but never certain she would live.” I tried to put a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged me off—I did not like that at all.
“She didn’t seem that weak to me.” He pressed his lips tightly together.
“You know how these things are; sometimes it happens fast. We ought to have her buried, though. She needs to be laid to rest.” I shook my head with exasperation.
“Swanhild won’t like to let her go. She’s mourning for her little sister.” Something stubborn had come into his expression, but I knew it was not so. The girl had recovered remarkably well and was outside this morning with Myrtle in tow, bothering the hired man, Smith, for sweets. It was Peter who could not let her go, and that angered me. This was our new beginning, our fresh and vibrant start. I did not want this inevitable death to tarnish all we had.
“Take her to Chicago.” I rose from the chair and turned my back on him. I could not look at him just then. The weakness I saw in him reminded me of Mads and roused the same disdain. I did not want to feel that. Not for him, my new husband. “We already have a plot there. We’d better put it to use.”
“You want to bury her with your late husband?” I could hear the revulsion in his voice.
“It’s my land and I bury who I want on it. It seems a waste to arrange for a new plot here. She cannot stay in the house much longer. The coffin already smells.”
“How can you speak of her like that?” I heard him rise from the chair behind me. “She is a dead child. A dead, innocent child—”
“Who nevertheless falls apart as all living things do when they die! You have to get her in the ground, that’s all.” The anger seeped from me then. What use was there in quarreling? The sooner I had this dealt with, the sooner I could have him back to his old self. I turned around and faced him. “I’m sorry, my dear, but it is hard for me to watch you grieve as you do. I wish you would take the child with you and arrange for a burial in the plot in Chicago. Your family needs your strength. I cannot take care of the farm on my own.”
“Of course.” His face was stiff and white. “Not to worry. I’ll take care of it.”
* * *
—
I thought the whole thing over and done with once the coffin was out of the house, but I was wrong. My husband still looked sick; he was brooding and often drunk. He stumbled to bed in late hours, only to wake up with headaches that lasted all day long.
“This was not what we agreed on,” I told him one night as he sat in the parlor drinking whiskey. “We agreed to run this place together as husband and wife. Now you leave me with all the work—”
“I am in mourning,” he saw fit to remind me.
“What man can afford such sentiments? You have other children to feed, a farm to run, and a wife to keep happy.”
“Have a drink with me, Bella.”
“I won’t! One of us has to keep a clear head.” And I had already had my drink in the kitchen. “Those pigs won’t raise themselves; they need to be looked after. You sitting here night after night feeling sorry for yourself will not produce the finest bacon on the market—”
“Feeling sorry for myself?” He laughed into the glass and sloshed the golden liquor around in there. “I just think I might have gotten a little more than I bargained for with you.” He had not touched me in weeks, not since the girl died. I ought to be patient as he had just lost a child, but it made me feel resentful.
“What does that mean? You knew what was expected when we married—”
“Do you know what they say about you in Chicago?” He swayed when he leaned forth in the chair and placed his hands on his knees.
“Yes.” I bit my lip hard to curb the anger. “I’m aware of what filthy things they say.”
“My friends think me a fool for marrying you—even my own mother does. They think it might be dangerous.”
I snorted loudly. “They say that of all women who come into more money than they can make in a lifetime.”
“They say that of women who come into that money through fire and death.”
“Life can be hard for any one of us.”
“Are you truly so unfortunate, Bella?” He hid his face behind the glass and looked at me through the amber liquid.
“No more than any other, I think. Many struggle in life.”
“Not as much as you, though, Bella. You’ve had poorer luck than anyone I know.”
* * *
—
I tried to ignore his moods. I took care of the house: washed and cooked, preserved and dried, cared for the animals and all four girls. Though Myrtle and Lucy were still young and at home, Swanhild and Jennie went to school several days a week. I thought it important that they were educated; the world was never kind to a woman lacking a keen mind. I often talked to Jennie about it. I wanted her to understand that a sweet face and a gentle husband was no one’s ticket to happiness. I wanted her to have a profession, I told her. A profession, property, and money of her own. Only then would she be safe.
“Safe from what?” she asked me one day. She was fourteen then, and so carefully looked after that she knew little of what was out there, ready to prey on her innocence. That was the price for being guarded—it left you both defenseless and na?ve.
“From men who would use you and take all you have.” I was sitting before her at the kitchen table. The tabletop was heaped with vegetables, ready to be preserved.
“Why would they do that?” Her rosebud mouth hung open. She was picking the beans she was set to shell completely apart with her fingernails.
“To rob you or just be unkind. Some would even beat you and leave you for dead.”
“Why?”
“They quite enjoy it. It brings out the juices in them.”