In the Garden of Spite Read online

  “So you’re up then.” He delivered a small wad of letters to my mother. She took a quick look at them and noted the handwriting. Then she gave them to me.

  “She is just sitting there,” Olina complained, looking my way. “She can’t do anything.”

  “She’ll be back to work in no time, I’m sure.” Peder’s gaze avoided mine and he turned to serve himself coffee from the kettle. Ole was still lingering by the door, tall and broad-necked, a little simple. He did not look at me at all but stared down at the floor instead.

  “Are they talking in the valley?” Mother asked Peder. Father was out, so we could chat freely.

  “Some.” Peder sat down and tasted his coffee, grimaced at the heat. His beard was dark and full, as Father’s used to be, his face tanned and worn from long hours in the sun. “When will you go back to work, Little Brynhild? I’m afraid they’ll find another maid if you—”

  “She won’t.” Mother cut him off. “Not if I have any say in it.”

  He took a moment, thought about it. “Father won’t be pleased if she stays at home.”

  “She could go elsewhere, like Marit did.” My sister had served outside Selbu before she got married. I could see her crooked scribblings on one of the letters in my hands. Another envelope beckoned me, though, shone like a moon on a starless night. I knew that slanted handwriting, that poor spelling, as well as my own. The stamp was like a gemstone, glittering bright. I lifted the letter to my nose and sniffed it: paper glue and dust, but it was different from all other paper and dust, because it came from across the sea.

  “I’ll go back to work.” My speech was still garbled due to the swelling.

  “Not looking like that.” Olina glanced at me. Her fingers were busy with the sewing in her lap.

  “You won’t,” Mother agreed.

  “The pain will go away.” I shifted on the chair as if to prove it. Everything ached and burned.

  Peder’s gaze measured me. “Not for another few weeks yet.”

  “One week,” I promised.

  Ole finally sat down by the table and let Mother fetch him coffee. “He should be treated the same, he who did that.” His voice was quivering, with anger perhaps.

  “Wouldn’t do much good.” Mother sounded weary and wiped her brow with the back of her hand.

  Peder was still measuring me. “Marit went to Rødde farm. Perhaps you could go there too.”

  “Is it far enough away?” Ole’s cup shook when he brought it to his lips. “Won’t they know?”

  “Probably, but she wouldn’t see him all the time.” My brother’s lips curled with distaste.

  “They say I asked for it, don’t they?” I could not help but say it aloud. Neither of my brothers answered, which was a good enough answer for me.

  Peder sighed and stretched out his legs. “You should have been more careful. It never pays off taunting those who have more to their name.”

  “I should have gone to the priest. He would have set things right.”

  Peder shook his head. “Hansteen would rather believe a farmer’s son than you.”

  “I would have had the child to prove it.”

  Mother sighed; Peder shifted. “Stories like that never end well. They would say you were hungry for gold.”

  “They already do, I reckon.” I looked to my brother for an answer.

  Another shrug. “Sure they do. It was a stupid and reckless thing you did.”

  “I didn’t get with child on purpose.”

  “That doesn’t matter if they think you did.”

  I clutched the letters in my hands so hard the ink was starting to smear. “Are they laughing?”

  A pause. “Yes.” Peder’s gaze dropped away. “They’re laughing.”

  They all bent their heads then: Olina over her sewing, Mother over the knitting, and my brothers over their cups. All bent their heads in shame but me. Mother sighed and bit her lip. Ole fidgeted. I ripped open the bejeweled envelope in my lap and tried to catch a whiff of that other place as I pulled the paper out. Nellie’s scribbles filled two pages. Dear Mother and Father . . . it began. You will be happy to hear that we are settling in nicely in our new apartment here in Chicago . . .

  “What is she saying?” Mother asked. She never learned to read well.

  I skimmed the letter. “She is doing fine. She complains about the weather . . . She says the streets are filled with people, but nobody really knows one another.” She wrote it as if it were a thing to mourn, not to envy.

  “You must read it out to me tonight.” Mother’s shoulders slumped with relief. She always worried that there would bad news: sickness, fire, or death. “We must write her back too. I won’t see her again in my lifetime, I reckon.” She folded her hands in her lap and sighed. “But at least we have those letters.”

  “Maybe we all ought to go to America.” Peder’s gaze narrowed. “We can own land there, not break our backs plowing someone else’s dirt.”

  “There’s not a single acre left unclaimed around these parts.” Ole nodded. “We’ll be tenants till we die.”

  “It’s crowded over there as well.” Mother lifted her head. “It is dusty and vile: horses rotting in the streets, houses burning down around people’s heads . . . you’ve heard what your sister writes.”

  “That’s in the cities, Mother. It is different in the country. Black soil as far as the eye can see.” Ole’s voice had turned wistful.

  Mother gave him a look. “Who have you been talking to?” She picked up her knitting from her lap; the needles clicked softly as her fingers worked the yarn into neat rows.

  Ole did not speak more of it. He knew Mother did not like talk about America. She was foolish like that. Shortsighted. I looked down at the pages in my hand and a lump formed in my throat, making it hard to breathe. I hated my sister for having escaped, leaving me behind to rot.

  That night, after writing down Mother’s words, useless sentences about the goat, crops, and her terrible gout, I added some extra words to the letter: Little Brynhild is not doing so well. She has problems finding her place in the valley. She was attacked for no reason, bleeding badly from the stomach. It seems they have it in for her. Perhaps the best thing would be if she could join you in America. If your husband has any amount to spare that could help pay her fare, I am sure she could be a great help to you in the house. I signed the letter, Your Mother and Father.

  3.

  Nellie

  Chicago, 1877

  Ifolded the letter and pushed it back into the envelope. The stiff paper had turned soft, as I had already read it many times, once aloud to my husband, John. I lifted the little piece of home to my nose to see if I could catch a whiff of pine, wood smoke, and soft, damp moss. Størsetgjerdet felt so very far away; it seemed like a lifetime since I last crossed the threshold and entered, beheld the cramped quarters, the soot-stained walls and the rough-hewn chairs, the rickety spinning wheel in the corner. I had no use for such a tool in Chicago; I bought my yarn in skeins ready for the knitting needles. The scent of wet moss was replaced by that of burning coal and horse sweat, boiling food from a dozen kitchens. The sound of chirping birds no longer greeted me in the mornings; instead, I heard the racket of wagon wheels on the bricked street, children crying and mothers scolding, men scrambling down the stairs of our tenement building ready to go to work. I did not regret the change, but sometimes I longed for the quiet. It is in your blood, I suppose, if you grow up as I did, high up, yet still far below, stern faces of mountains flecked with snow.

  You will always long for peace.

  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 shoul
ders 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.

  * * *

  —

  When John had left, I hoisted Rudolph onto my hip and grabbed the rolled-up rug with my free hand. Together we made the perilous journey down the steep, narrow stairs that descended the outside wall to the yard below. My son rested his cheek against my shoulder and looked up at the cloudy sky above.

  “Birds.” He pointed with his chubby hand. I could still see sticky flecks of porridge on his fingers even though I had dried them off. Small children are often a challenge like that, always filthy in some way, but my boy was worse than most. No matter how often I was at his face with my damp cloth, he always seemed to grow a mustache of grime above his upper lip. I thought that it might have to do with how we lived. It was not a clean house, dusty and infested with coal smoke. It did not matter how often I scrubbed the floors of our apartment when everything outside of it was filthy. I did not complain, though; it was better than what I came from—we even had a bedroom—but I could not help but dream of having a house of our own. A place where the dust stayed outside whenever I closed the door and I did not always smell the neighbors’ potatoes boiling on the stove. I knew, though, that in order to get good things in life, one had to be patient and plan ahead. Take stock and save—be wise. Paying for Little Brynhild’s crossing would certainly upset every plan I had laid, but then again, perhaps my son would not always be so grimy if I had a sister around to help me out. Perhaps my days would be better if I did not have to do all the work myself, and maybe—just maybe—I would not lose another child if I did not have to be so tired all the time.

  We arrived at the bottom of the stairs and stepped out in the yard: a cramped, uneven space framed by fences of graying boards. On one side, outhouses and sheds stood huddled together like a flock of frozen sparrows. There was no pavement, only the trampled soil, and whenever it rained, puddles would form and the ground would turn muddy. Above our heads, laundry hung on taut lines that crisscrossed the space between our building and the one on the other side of the fence. The sheets and shirts moved with the wind like little sails. They made a rustling sound, like leaves, scraping against one another on the lines, stiff and hard but doubtlessly clean. A bright red skirt had bled excess dye down on the shirt that hung below.

  I never much liked to hang my wash out like that for everyone to see. I always dried our own underthings in the apartment. It was different with wash I took in for money—I did not much care if my neighbors saw the mend
ed pants and yellowing undershirts the unwed immigrant men brought in for me to scrub. My line was always full.

  I put my son down in a patch of grass next to the outhouse, scanning the sparse greenery for hazards: rusted nails or pieces of glass, sharp edges of metal. I had performed the same survey the day before, but one never knew what people dropped. One day the summer before, I had found him squeezing a dead rat. Sometimes the older girls in the building looked after the little ones, but so early in the morning they would be busy helping their mamas or readying for school. I was on my own for another half hour at least before my friend Clara would come out with her small daughter, Lottie, having sent her posse of older children out the door. It was easier then, when there were more of us. I did not fret so much whenever I had to turn my back on my little one if there were other women about to keep an eye.

  In that bleak early morning, though, I was all alone as I hoisted the rug onto the line that traveled all the way from the building to the fence and got the beater out from the shed. No one knew whom it first belonged to; we all used it to clean the few rugs that covered the worn floorboards in our apartments. My rug had been bought from a fellow Norwegian, woven from scraps of fabric, mostly blue and gray. I dreamed, of course, of thick rugs with oriental patterns; flowers snaking across vivid red and emerald green, but that was not something we could afford, and so I settled to take care of what we did have the best that I could.

  Rudolph laughed as I started beating the rug before me; he always did like the sound. It scared him but thrilled him too. He all but clapped his little hands and the sound of his joy filled the chilly yard. I could not help but laugh a little too, just from the sound of that childish laughter. Soon I did not even feel the chill, as my vigorous beating had me sweating and huffing. Underneath the blue plaid headscarf my hair was drenched through, but I went at it a little longer than I had to, just to keep him laughing like that.