I could barely see my family’s faces anymore; they remained blurred in my mind no matter how hard I tried. I could see their bodies, though: Mother with her bony hands in her lap, always working on something. Father with his unkempt beard sitting before the fire, and Little Brynhild, still twelve in my memory, with square shoulders and hooded eyes, fists always clenched at her sides, as if preparing for an oncoming fight.
My heart ached for her as I put the envelope away in the empty tea box where I kept my letters from my family. The box had a picture of a ship on the side, which I thought was appropriate, since there was such a long sea journey between us. The ship on the box had sails, though, while I had traveled on a steamer, and the scent of tea leaves lingered and erased whatever smell there was of woodland. It was a pretty box, the prettiest one that I owned, and so it felt right to use it to keep such treasured words—even if not all of them were pleasant but made me fret and worry.
“I know only too well how she feels,” I told John when he rose to have his breakfast. “That sense that there is nothing for you but struggle and toil.” I poured his coffee and placed a bowl of porridge before him on the well-scrubbed table. My two-year-old son, Rudolph, sat perched on his father’s knee, clumsily spooning breakfast into his little mouth. His feet were restless, kicking out in the air and landing on John’s shins. I should have scolded him for that, but just that morning I did not have it in me. “What will become of her now?” I asked my husband. “You know what it’s like once people are set against you, even if for no good reason. Once they have their eyes on you, it’s hard to escape wagging tongues.”
“Seems to me that tongues are the least of her worries.” John looked at me with his soft brown eyes brimming with compassion for my sister. It made my heart fill with warmth to see his brow crease with worry for a girl he had not even met. He was a good man, my John. I was lucky to have him. “If they have beaten her as badly as the letter says, she should worry for her life.” He blew on the porridge in his spoon. “Won’t your father do anything about it?”
“Hardly.” I fetched some coffee for myself and slumped down in the chair opposite his. “He’s a broken man, my father, with no will to do anything at all. Ailments and loss have taken what little spirit he had. Mother is different, but she cannot protect Little Brynhild. They are not well respected in the valley, and those with more means will always have a louder voice.” I sighed and reached over the table to touch my little boy’s dark hair. He lifted his gaze—as dark as his father’s—and smiled at me with smears of porridge on his lips and chin. I wondered what I would do if someone hurt my child the way Little Brynhild had been hurt, and the mere thought of it made my chest contract and caused a sickening wave of anguish to spool out in the pit of my stomach. I certainly would not sit back and do nothing.
“I agree that she should leave Selbu.” John spooned more porridge into his mouth and dried off his mustache with a pristine handkerchief.
“Yes, she should,” I agreed. “She should leave and never return.” My gaze fastened on my coffee, lingered on the brown, murky surface. My brow knitted with a fresh bout of worry. “I just wish the letter said more about what happened.”
“It sounded like a terrible thing . . . bleeding from the stomach—”
“Hush,” I scolded gently, and waved my hand in the air. “Not in front of the child.”
“He is too small to understand,” John reassured me in a calm voice. “You would prefer for her to come here, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course I would. It would be safer for her, strange as that may sound.”
“She could save up same as you,” he suggested, not from any heartlessness but only because we did not have very much.
“Of course, but it took me a very long time.” Years of toiling, milking, and cleaning. Sleepless cold nights in a maids’ loft, and an ache in my back that I could not get rid of, and which only grew worse after Rudolph was born. I had paid for my crossing with pain as well as labor. “I worry that something more will happen to her before she has the money together or that the misery will eat at her and ruin her spirit before she arrives.” In my mind’s eye, I saw my mother’s scrawny form—still with no face—and the sense of hopelessness she emitted cut into my heart even across time and distance.
John’s warm hand came to cover mine on the table. Our gazes locked and he smiled. “I shall see what I can do. Perhaps I can work some extra hours . . . I know how much you care for her.”
I gave him a shivering smile in reply; I hated to burden him with more than he already had—we were hoping to have a house of our own—but it was true what he said, I cared about Little Brynhild. More than I did for any of my other siblings. Perhaps it was just because she had such a hard time getting along; she was born with all these sharp angles and thorns and got in her own way more often than not. I was thirteen when she arrived in this world, almost a woman grown, and Mother was already fading by then; her smiles had become fewer and her laughter scarce, while I still had some to go around. Little Brynhild was mine in a way, before I left her behind.
Perhaps it was guilt I felt that made it so important to offer her my help.
“I would have had a miserable life if I’d stayed in Norway,” I said, “but fortune has been good to me since I came to America. Perhaps the same will be true for her.” I rose from the chair and crossed the creaking floor to John’s chair, bent down, and pressed a kiss to his cheekbone. “I am grateful,” I told him, and smiled when he squeezed my hand. “I know it will take time for her to get the money together even with our help, but whatever amount we can spare is certainly of more use to her than my tossing and turning on the pillows at night.”
“Worry is a poor bedfellow,” said he.
“It certainly is,” I agreed.
* * *
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