“You be Ma and I’ll be Mrs. Scott,” Mary said to Laura. “My rag doll will be the baby.”
Caroline’s cheeks ached from holding back her smiles. The new center of Mary’s world lay nursing in Caroline’s arms. Overnight Mary had become a miniature nursemaid: earnest, attentive, and entirely unconscious of how darling she was as she bustled about the cabin. When she could not fuss over her new sister, she practiced with her doll. It would only be a matter of time, Caroline supposed, before Mary tried to suckle that poor cotton baby. Caroline’s lips twitched at the thought. All day long, she wanted to let the delight tumble out of her, but she could not let Mary realize that her grown-up airs only made her more childlike.
Laura was braced against the doorjamb, having a tug-of-war with Jack over a stick of firewood. “I don’t—want—to play—inside,” she said, as though Jack were jerking each piece of the answer out of her.
“I’ll let you hold my rag doll,” Mary promised.
Caroline’s eyebrow arched. That was a sacrifice, coming from Mary. Laura was tempted, and her grip faltered just as Jack’s playful growl changed. He let loose the stick, and Laura plopped onto the ground. “Jack!” she cried as the bulldog turned from her, his throat rumbling. Then, “Oh! It’s a man coming, Ma!”
“You mustn’t shout, Laura,” Caroline reminded her. “Is it Mr. Edwards?”
Laura shook her head. “A new man.”
Caroline shifted to look outside. A bay dun, mounted by a sandy-haired man, was trotting up the path from the creek. Sunlight glinted off a pair of round spectacles, giving the rider the look of a schoolteacher. Jack erupted into a fury of barking, and the horse shied. Charles’s voice followed, calling off Jack and hallooing a welcome from the stable.
Mary ran to soothe her rag doll from the noise. Caroline tugged at her open bodice, trying not to dislodge Carrie from her feeding. The calico made a poor shield. “Close the door, please, Laura,” she said.
“Aw, Ma!”
“You may stay outside if you keep well out of Pa’s way. Close the door behind you.”
Wishing again for her rocking chair, Caroline resettled herself onto the crate with her back against the wall and her ear cocked to the window. The wind seemed to blow the centers from the men’s words, so she could hear only where one ended and another began. The tempo of their conversation was absurdly clipped: three words from the stranger, one from Charles, another from the stranger, two more from Charles. Perhaps the man spoke no English, Caroline decided. She gave up making sense of it and returned to the task at hand.
The baby’s attention had drifted, too. Her eyes were closed and her tongue poked lazily at the nipple, sending a thread of warmth trailing below Caroline’s hips, to the place that belonged to begetting and birthing. Caroline tickled under Carrie’s chin to remind her, and the thin red lips resumed their muscular kneading. Neither of her older girls had taken to idling at the breast as this new baby did. She suckled in short spurts, tugging at the nipple half a dozen times, then slackening, content to make a meal of each swallow. It put Caroline in mind of the dainty way Mary sipped at the tin cup she shared with Laura, but it troubled her, too, that a child so new would be willing to make do with so little. “Take your fill, baby girl,” she coaxed.
She did not speak to the baby by name, as the others did. To Caroline, Carrie was a word whose meaning was still forming. The child herself had left her body, but was still so small and near as to seem a part of Caroline—a cutting grafted back into her side. Sharing her name with the baby only blurred the lines further.
Mary, being the first and only child in the house, had been Mary straightaway, though after the five years it had taken to become Ma, Caroline had loved even more to hear herself say the baby, my baby, our baby, as though saying it somehow made it truer than holding Mary in her arms. This child was spending her first days as Laura had—an anonymous little creature, barely beginning to peel away from the mold her sisters had left behind.
For now, Caroline contented herself with looking at the child and thinking Caroline Celestia, as though it were the Latinate name for spindly, black-haired baby girls native to the Kansas prairie. Even if such a taxonomy existed, she mused, it could tell her only so much, for although a seed called Ipomoea purpurea would always unfurl into a morning glory, it was anyone’s guess whether the blooms would be pink, purple, or blue.
Mary came to stand beside them and peeped over Caroline’s elbow. “Ma?” she said. Caroline knew what the question would be. She had promised Mary could mind the baby when she’d finished feeding. Minding meant little more than sitting on the big bed, watching her sister sleep, but Mary reveled in the responsibility.
“Is Baby Carrie full?” Mary asked. She said the name as though it were a single word: Baby-Carrie.
Caroline tried it for herself. “Baby Carrie is nearly finished.” She liked the bridge it made so well, she said it again to herself. Baby Carrie. “You may fetch a clean flannel and lay out a fresh diaper while you wait.”
Laura came scampering in with Jack trotting behind her. Charles followed. “He had a great big book, Ma,” she said, breathless with the news, “and he wrote my name in it, and asked me how old I am, and put that in, too. He’s going to send it all the way to Mr. Grant in Washington.”
“My goodness,” Caroline said to Laura. “That sounds very important. What is all this, Charles?”
“Census taker.” Charles fanned his forehead with his hat. “Amiable enough fellow,” he said, with a nod toward Laura. “Funny thing, though—he didn’t mark anything down for property value. Whole column’s left blank.”
Caroline raised Carrie to her shoulder and leaned her cheek against the top of the baby’s head. It fitted neatly as a teacup into a saucer. “We don’t own it, Charles,” she said gently.
“Not yet, but that doesn’t make it worthless.”
Twenty-Three
Caroline knew the moment the sickness touched her. It had been all around her—first Mary and Laura, then Charles, all within a single afternoon—but the moment it breached her own body was different.
“Oh,” she said, and sat down on the end of the bedstead. She was panting. Her nose tingled with something more than the smell of scalded broth, and her eyes were warm beneath their lids as they roved over the disheveled room.