“Excuse me?”
“It’s one of Benjamin Franklin’s slogans the Mother likes to tap you on the head with every chance you get. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation. That’s the full quotation.”
Aldine nodded and wondered whether Mr. Franklin was a Mormon. It seemed quite possible.
“We just don’t get up here much and the truth is, it’s hard enough keeping up with the rest of the house,” Charlotte said. “The wind isn’t even supposed to blow in September. February, March, April—those are the regular blow months. That’s when you have to turn the radio up or put the covers over your head or sing yourself silly to block out the noise. And you don’t clean the dust till the wind stops, either. No point. I think it comes through glass. Through walls. But lately it’s worse than ever. It’s like you can’t even eat without swallowing the neighbor’s field. I keep hoping we’ll go to California, where my aunt lives but my dad says it’s just a couple of bad years.”
She sighed and folded up the coverlet so the dust would remain inside it. “I’ll get you a fresh one from the cupboard, and bring wet rags for wiping it all down. Then it’ll be clean enough for a while.”
“Thanks very much,” Aldine said. She was sick with disappointment, half smothered by regret. Beautiful Loam County, Kansas. “I’m sorry I came.”
Charlotte opened her eyes wide. They were a muddy sort of blue but enormous, like the rest of her. Her cheeks were cherry pink, her lashes black. She and her mother didn’t look at all alike but Aldine could see what it would mean to them both to brush their hair and put them into other clothes and set them down anywhere but here. Which in turn made her wonder what Kansas would do for her own looks.
“You’re sorry?” Charlotte asked. Her face was full of apology. “That’s my fault. I shouldn’t have said all that about the dust. It’s not so bad really. You’ll like it fine here.”
“But to come noo,” Aldine said, unable to remember how Americans said now. “When you’re all thinking of leaving.”
Charlotte used one of her big soft hands to wipe a strand of curly hair off her forehead. She laughed in a way that would have been nice to hear if Aldine hadn’t been so sick with regret. “Oh, don’t worry,” Charlotte said. “My dad isn’t thinking of leaving. He thinks we all ought to be proud to live on the same farm that his father got from his father that his father got from, I don’t know, Tecumseh or somebody.”
Who Tecumseh was, Aldine couldn’t guess. She said, “Your mother didn’t seem happy. To see me, I mean.”
“Didna,” Charlotte said. “Is that how you said it? Didna.”
Aldine nodded, though it didn’t sound at all the same.
“I told my dad it was silly to advertise the Stony Bank School in New York, of all places,” Charlotte went on. “He’s got this friend there from when he worked for the Harvey House—did you stop and eat at one?”
Aldine shook her head, trying to memorize how Charlotte had said Stony Bank.
“Well, my dad has this friend in the newspaper business named Terence Tidball who said he’d put in an ad for free—Dad is a big one for ‘contacts’—and Dad said that he was taking Terence up on his offer because by God he would bring music and culture to the prairie or die trying. My dad would, I mean, not Terence Tidball.”
Aldine didn’t know what to say to this. The place was not at all what she’d imagined. Where were the rivers? Where were the clouds? Where were the green pastures?
“Are you hungry?” Charlotte asked.
“Aye,” Aldine said, more fervently than she meant. “And clarty.”
Charlotte gave Aldine a look of incomprehension.
“Dirty,” Aldine said.
“Well, I’ll go see if we have enough water for a bath. It’s washday, though. I’ll be back with a clean spread in a sec.”
Aldine’s legs felt unsteady, and she reached out to hold one of the bed knobs.
“Why don’t you lie down? You look kind of faint.”
Aldine lay down on the plain white sheet and closed her eyes until Charlotte had gone clomping away. When she opened them, she stood and pulled aside the sheers of the curved window, the glass of which was faintly blue. Through the blue lens she could see a bare field, a dark chicken, a running child in a smock. That must be Neva, Aldine thought, and closed her eyes to the room.
11
The footsteps on the stairs to the attic were too brisk and tappity to be Charlotte’s. A round face, small and brown, peered in at Aldine from the doorway. The girl had eyes and skin the color of treacle. “I’m Geneva,” she said, stepping past the threshold. “You can call me Neva, though.” She’d caught sight of Aldine’s bracelets and had to prize her eyes from them. “Are you Allene?”
“Aldine,” Aldine said. It occurred to her that Neva’s tiny body was perfectly proportioned to the room.
Neva put her small hand on Aldine’s bracelets, the ones Dr. O’Malley had bought, or which had been his wife’s, Aldine had never been sure. The girl rubbed her finger over the yellow one, then the black. “Are they wood?” Neva asked.
“No. Bakelite. Like the telephone.”
“It’s like you came from Montgomery Wards!” Neva said. “Dad sent away for a teacher and here you are.”
Neva’s two front teeth were gone and when she smiled the bare gums made her look like an impish vampire. “Come on!” she said, pulling on the bracelet arm, leading Aldine along, talking and talking. She said their radio came from Montgomery Wards, and that the Hintons on the next farm over had gotten their whole house from Montgomery Wards, but not the front, which Mrs. Hinton said she had to have or she wasn’t staying another minute, so her father had built the porch but hadn’t charged them because the Hintons were new and it was good to help the new people when so many others were leaving but it turned out that the Hintons left, anyway, and after only a year. She said there was bathwater downstairs and chicken pie pretty soon and that Krazy Kat had five kittens except one of them didn’t look too good and did Aldine know how to nurse kittens?
Aldine said she didn’t, and she followed Neva’s ponytail and stream of chatter down to a tub that had been filled for her on the back porch. “You can bathe in there,” Neva said. “We won’t let Clare come in.” She raised her eyebrows and smiled the wide pink-gum smile.
“You have another sister?” Aldine asked, as glad to see the full tub of water as she was dismayed to find herself in a place where, once again, she would not have a private bath in a scoured white bog. They didn’t even have running water. Yet how could this be?
“No,” Neva said, and shook her head.
“Then who’s Clare?” Aldine decided to take off her shoes.