Caroline: Little House, Revisited

Carrie squalled until she vibrated with fury, perfectly incensed by the touch of the water. Mary and Laura scrunched up their shoulders and covered their ears. Charles was not perturbed. He bathed Carrie with the sweet white soap, toweled her dry, and folded her into a clean flannel blanket, humming as he worked. “Clean as a hound’s tooth,” he pronounced, fitting the baby back into the hollow of Caroline’s arm.

Caroline touched her lips to Carrie’s fine black hair and breathed in. The scent of pollen still tickled her nose, but the raw newness of it was gone, shrouded by the smell of the store-bought soap. She kissed the baby’s head, smiling over the pinch of disappointment in her throat. “Thank you, Charles,” she said.

When the girls had had their turn in the washtub—they’d splashed more than they’d scrubbed, but Charles made sure to soap their hair and kept the suds from their eyes—Charles refilled the tub and draped the wagon cover between the bedstead and the mantel, screening off the hearth for her.

Caroline stood gingerly, her feet wider apart than usual. Between her legs it felt as though there was not enough space for what had always been there. One foot, then another went into the washtub. She gripped the rim and crouched slowly into it.

The water was so soft and warm, it felt like part of her. “Oh,” she breathed, more quietly than the crackling fire. She sat still a full minute, letting it touch her. Then Caroline unpinned the broad linen band Mrs. Scott had put around her the day Carrie was born and unwrapped herself. Her middle eased out like a flounce, the skin shirred around her navel. She sighed. The delaine, folded in tissue in the trunk at the foot of the bed would not fit her now, nor for months to come. A frivolous thought—there was no call for such a dress in this place. She washed herself tentatively, wondering whether the soap would mask her own smell the way it had changed Carrie’s newborn scent. The blood turned the cloth and then the water faintly pink.

Carrie’s voice sputtered on the other side of the canvas, and Caroline felt the tingle of her milk. In a moment it ran in hot rivulets down her wrinkled belly. It was true milk now, white enough to cloud the water where it dripped. She felt an easing in her breasts, the relief of a pressure so gradual that the building of it had barely registered. Caroline gazed fondly at the tub, the fire. There could be no pleasure in lingering now. It was a shared thirst. Carrie cried, and Caroline’s chest opened like a moistened sponge, as if to absorb the child back into her.

Caroline stood and peeked over the wagon cover. Charles was perched at the foot of the bed, swaying forward and back to soothe the baby as best he could with no chair to rock her. “Hush, Carrie,” he chanted. “Hush-hush-hush. Ma’s coming; Ma’s coming just as soon as she can.” Carrie took no comfort from his assurances. Her voice turned gravelly and her fists balled.

“Unbutton your nightshirt,” Caroline whispered as she toweled herself. He gave her a dubious look. She nodded encouragement, and Charles did as he was told. “Lie down and put her across your chest,” Caroline said. He laid the baby with her head over his heart, just as a woman would do. “Now nest your hands around her. She’s used to being held tight as a bean in its shell.”

His hands blanketed Carrie’s little body. One breath, then two, and the tempest subsided. The baby hiccoughed and blinked, as if shocked by her own contentment. Caroline smiled to herself, knowing the feel of those hands spanning her waist. A flicker of envy warmed her skin at the thought of what it would be like to fit entirely within them.

She stood, pressing the towel to her breasts, her feet reluctant to lift from the water. Carrie would wait, cozied up that way on her pa’s bare chest. With luck the baby might even fall asleep. But Caroline did not sink back into the tub. Moments ago she had wanted to stay in that warm, soft water, to pull it over her like a quilt and soak until morning. Seeing Charles and Carrie together, Caroline wanted only to be beside them.

She slipped her nightdress over her damp skin and fitted her body back into the hollow it had left in the straw tick. Between them was the little peak she and Mrs. Scott had made, lying so deferentially side by side. Caroline leaned across it and pillowed her head on Charles’s shoulder. She could not see his face lying this way, but as they gazed at the baby she began to see his features reflected in Carrie, as though Carrie were a little mirror tilted sideways. His narrow chin was there with no whiskers to hide behind, and his high hairline.

“She has your eyes,” Charles said.

She did, poor thing. “Newborn babies always have eyes like slate. They’ll brighten in time. Mary’s and Laura’s did.”

Charles’s whiskers brushed her forehead as he turned. She could feel him looking quizzically down on her. “Is that what you think of your eyes?”

“Ma always said they were gray as the December day I was born.” His were like a woman’s, such a delicate blue as she’d only seen painted on fine china.

He traced her brow bone with his thumb. “Your ma was wrong,” he said. “Your eyes are gray like flannel, and there’s nothing half so warm and soft in the world as flannel.”

Caroline’s eyes flickered up, then her face ripened with a smile as the compliment swirled through her. She pressed her cheek, red and round as an apple skin, into his shoulder.

He chuckled softly at her shyness, rumbling under the baby. Carrie crinkled awake.

The sounds the two of them made, his bass and her tremolo, rippled beneath Caroline’s skin. Her pulse burgeoned through her body, and a fresh burbling of blood warmed the path Carrie had made through her.

Caroline sat up and inched herself as far toward the headboard as the flannel pad allowed while the child gritched at the air and began to sputter. “Here, Charles,” she said and uncovered her breast. “Let me.”

Charles lifted the fussing baby from his chest as though her flinty cries might strike fire. Carrie’s lips buttoned onto her. Charles watched as the frantic movements of Carrie’s jaw subsided into contentment.

“Caroline Ingalls, you are a wonder.”

She looked down at the child, drawing its current of sustenance through her. Most any woman in the world could do as she had done, but Caroline could not deny his wonder. There was nothing Charles could not fashion, given the wood and tools to do it with, but she had formed this child—this creature of breath and bone—out of nothing but a spurt. She had not even begun with an intention. And now when the child cried, there was milk.

Charles looked out the window and then back at her. “I feel like a man who’s found Canaan,” he said.

The land of milk and honey. She saw it as he did, in the prairie grass, honey-gold in the wind, the running creek, the cow and calf, and now in the flow of her own milk. They had never wanted for shelter or game in the Big Woods, but this land was different. It seemed to lie with its arms open, inviting them to suckle freely of its bounty. When spring came she would trust her seeds to the good, rich ground. If this land would feed her children, it would become another sister to her. We came unto the land whither thou sentest us . . . , she thought, as if speaking to the place itself, and this is the fruit of it.





Twenty-Two


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