by Jane Smiley
Rosanna was ironing and Eloise was folding. Frankie was down for his afternoon nap. Rosanna said, “Did you go to a baptism, Eloise? No, you didn’t. If we had had a baptism, then you would have gone, and there would have been a breakfast after, and there wasn’t. Why do you keep asking me?”
“I don’t know.”
Rosanna took the shirt she was ironing off the ironing board, turned it over, and pressed the tip of the iron along the seam of the collar. It was not quite hot enough, so she took it over to the stove, set it down, and picked up the other one. Eloise said, “Do you think we’ll ever get electricity?”
Rosanna didn’t say anything. She wasn’t particularly in favor of electricity, those wires running who knew where. She said, “Is Mama sending you little notes telling you to keep asking me about that baptism?”
Eloise stared at her, then said, “No.”
Then she said, “Not really.”
Then she said, “But I know she’s worried. Cousin Josie’s boy got up one morning and was dead of cholera by the time he went to bed that night.”
“No, he—”
“And that boy who was in our school, he was just in first grade, the horses spooked and the wagon wheel went right over him.”
“And Walter’s brother died when he was two and Walter never got over it, even though he wasn’t born yet.” She handed the shirt to Eloise, who began doing up the buttons, and took another one out of the ironing basket. Rosanna liked ironing shirts—it was soothing—but she also didn’t mind pants and overalls and sheets and pillowcases. If doing laundry was a chore, ironing was its reward.
“I don’t think you should laugh about it.”
Rosanna spread a sleeve across the ironing board. “Well, I’m not, but they talk more about Lester than they do about Howard, who died in the influenza.”
“He was a baby.”
“He was older than Frankie.”
“So there,” said Eloise.
Rosanna bit her lip, and didn’t say any more. Either she had talked herself into a corner, or Eloise had won the argument, she couldn’t quite tell which, but that was the way it was with Eloise. Even the teacher at school had said to Rosanna, “I had to tell her that she could only raise twenty objections in the morning and twenty in the afternoon. They tend to bring a halt to the educational process.”
Rosanna began ironing the back of the shirt, and Eloise went into the kitchen to check on the bread. Of course that was why Rosanna was so careful with Frankie—more careful than Walter liked, and in some sense more careful than Walter knew. If you were a Catholic and you were baptized and you were a child who hadn’t had First Communion, then you were not damned to Hell if you died, you went to Limbo, and then, as far as Rosanna was concerned, because she couldn’t imagine any truly bad thing happening to one of God’s children, you moved on to Heaven and you were fine forever after. Methodists also believed in original sin and infant baptism, but there was a catch, and Rosanna had memorized it—there could be a parent or godparent, but it could not be her unbaptized self, and she could not therefore bring herself to allow the baptism. And so, without even discussing the matter, she and Walter were at an impasse with regard to Frankie.
Why had this not come up at the wedding (a Methodist wedding)? Well, the answer was that Rosanna was headstrong, and had never cared much for religion, and had wanted to marry Walter and get out of the crowd that was her own family. She had assumed nothing else was important. It was only after marriage that you began to think about sin, and if one side of the family (all around, and full of opinions) believed one thing, and the other side (also in and out of the house) believed another, you had to pretend that all beliefs were equally silly and then live with the consequences.
She handed the second shirt to Eloise, who said, “Why did you make six loaves?”
“I said I would make three for Mama, because she’s sitting with Aunt Rose this week and doesn’t have time to make her own.”
“Is Aunt Rose going to get well?”
Rosanna looked at Eloise and put her hands on her hips, then said, “No,” because if Eloise was going to ask so many questions then sometimes she had to get a straight answer, didn’t she?
“Is she going to die?”
“If she’s lucky, since she can hardly breathe and hasn’t left her bed for a year.”
“Even to go to the bathroom?”
“Eloise, I don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“Goodness, Eloise, you sound about eight, and you’re fifteen.”
“Oh.”
“Aunt Rose is sixty-eight. She’s had a hard life, and her husband left her to go play baseball or something, down in Des Moines, and she never got over it, and that’s all I know. I’m sure Mama will have plenty to add the next time we see her.”
“Can I take Frankie out? It’s not that cold. We can walk down the road and look for wildflowers.”
Rosanna picked up the stack of folded clothes and set them in the laundry basket. They smelled starchy and fresh. She said, “That’s fine. I saw some bluebells when I was out there yesterday.”
She turned toward the stairs. Now she could hear him calling her by name—“Mama! Mama!” The very sound of his voice made her want to set down the laundry basket and run to him, but she maintained her dignity because Eloise was right behind her.
ELOISE WAS THERE at Thanksgiving, and she was looking at Frankie the very moment when he astounded the entire family by shouting, “One two three four five six sedno eight none tin!” Her mother ran in from the kitchen, Rosanna threw up her hands, and even Rolf, who was leaning over his plate in what Eloise considered her brother’s usual thickheaded way, looked up and laughed. Opa said, “I’ll be!” Frank became the family genius right there. Her mother remembered some aunt who could read at four, and also that Rosanna had said, “I’m very pleased to meet you, sir,” to Father Berger when she was not yet two, without any coaching at all. But one to ten at not yet two—well, that was something.
Eloise was less impressed. Now that she had been looking after little Frank for almost nine months, she knew he was far from perfect. The thing he was smart at was not taking no for an answer, but, thought Eloise, no one knew that, because no one ever said no to him other than herself. Rosanna said, “I don’t think so, darling,” or “Maybe later, Frank, honey,” and then Frank wheedled and nodded until Rosanna thought he was so cute that she gave him whatever he wanted, and then she told everyone what a happy and agreeable baby he was. When Eloise said no to him (“No, I will not give you my spritz cookie,” for example), Frank opened his mouth and screamed. Then Rosanna came running up the stairs and said, “Why is he screaming?” and before Eloise had a chance to answer, she swept Frankie into her arms and said, “All right, baby. All right, Frankie, let’s go downstairs and let Eloise finish her studying.” Of course, Frankie didn’t get the cookie, but he did get something better, Eloise thought, since Rosanna was still nursing him, just the way her mother and Aunt Helen had nursed every one of the children except Eloise (“She weaned herself at nine months. I never will understand that child”) until the next one came along.
Frank didn’t ask Walter for anything at all. He sometimes looked at Walter, and he laughed when Walter sat down on the floor and played with the jack-in-the-box and the drum. Or he rode on Walter’s shoulders or hung upside down over Walter’s arm and laughed, but Eloise could see that Frank was a little afraid of Walter, as who wouldn’t be, loud as Walter was.
Every day, Frank attempted with Eloise what worked so well with Rosanna—talking. Just today, when Eloise picked Frank up from the puzzle he was looking at (and chewing on the pieces, not putting it together, where was the genius in that?) to put him in his bed for his nap, he had cried and reached for the puzzle, trying to get down. “Time for a nap,” said Eloise. Rosanna was in the kitchen making her pumpkin pies, so there was no help for him.
“Puz!” barked Frank.
“After your nap,” said Elois
e.
“Puz! One puz!” said Frank, now not crying, but looking at her.
“No,” said Eloise.
“One!” said Frank.
“No,” said Eloise.
And here was where Frank arched his back and had a tantrum, because Rosanna was always so charmed by Frank saying “One puz!” or “Little later!” that she gave in, and let him have one more minute with the puzzle or ten more minutes before bed. It wasn’t at all like living at home with her brothers, who at fourteen, ten, and seven were so used to “no” that, even as their mother was opening her mouth to respond to any request of any kind, Kurt, John, and Gus were making big silent “no”s with their mouths. And then, when Ma spoke, they all laughed and she wondered why.
Eloise’s own view was that there was no reason to ask. Years of watching Rosanna, who couldn’t help chattering on about all her plans, so that Ma had to have some opinion or other, and Rolf, who just did what Papa told him had to be done, showed Eloise that if you simply went about your business, no one interfered with you, especially in a house where there were six children, sometimes an aunt or a cousin living in, a hired man or two from the old country, and Oma and Opa in and out. You did your assigned tasks in a somewhat ostentatious manner and asked questions until they got fed up with you, then you went behind the corn crib and read your book or drew your picture. And then you put what you were doing under your mattress, and no one ever asked you about it. It was the same at school. If you raised your hand enough times in the front row, they sat you in the back, almost behind the woodstove, and you could finish your work (which was always easy) and go on reading the book you had brought in your schoolbag, entitled Miss Lulu Bett (a book that her friend Maggie had bought in a store down in Usherton). She and her friends had all sorts of publications that the adults knew nothing about, including another book called Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle and a very fat one called Little Dorrit, though none of the girls had been able to get through that one yet. They had copies of Adventure magazine; The Delineator, which had nice dress patterns that Eloise liked to look at; and four issues of McCall’s. Each of the girls kept a diary—Maggie had gotten them notebooks, and they had sewn covers out of canvas. Eloise’s was tan, with blue embroidery. What, she thought, was so special about a child who could say ten words in a row, just because they had been said to him over and over (as in “One two three four five six seven eight nine ten, ready or not, here I come!”)? But now her own mother, the great naysayer, was kissing him all over, and everyone was laughing, and Opa said, “Ja, maybe he’s smart enough not to buy himself a farm, what you think?”
Everyone laughed as if this were a joke. Eloise thought, “I’m smart enough for that.” She glanced at Rolf, who was eating his goose as if he hadn’t a thought in the world. Eloise thought, “But Rolf isn’t.” She picked up the spoon for the mashed potatoes, and served herself another small helping.
“HE ISN’T yet two,” said Mama, holding him a little more tightly.
“Ah, he’ll like it,” said Papa. “Never saw a nicer horse than Jake. You’ve been on him. I’ve been on him. Here, Eloise, climb on the feed trough there, and show Rosanna.”
It was dim in the big barn, but arrows and sparkles of light pierced the dark walls here and there. Frank knew what the beings were in their separate enclosures—“cows” going in and out over there, white “sheep” with black faces (one two three four five six), a “rooster” perched on a beam above them, and this greatest of beings, Jake the “horse,” pale gray, almost white, who now turned his nose and eyes toward Frank and made noise. Frank laughed.
Eloise said, “I have a dress on.”
“You’re wearing your long johns, aren’t you? He’s clean. I brushed him before you came out.”
They all walked with Jake across some of the dark earth to a place, and then Eloise climbed, and then Papa helped her, and soon she was sitting on the back of Jake, holding his hair, and then Papa put his hands around Frank and lifted him high in the air, and he kicked his legs, and then he was set upon Jake’s back, just in front of Eloise, and Eloise put her arm tight around him.
“Oh, goodness,” said Mama. “Well, that is cute, in spite of everything.”
“I was riding my father’s Percherons out to the pasture when I was three,” said Walter. “Now, he did not let me ride Uncle Leon’s Clydesdales, but the Percherons …”
Underneath Frank, the warm, rounded gray surface rippled and moved, and Eloise took both of his hands in hers and put them into the hair, and said, “Hold on, Frankie,” and so he gripped that hair. He could feel her through his suit, hard against his back and shoulders. In front of him rose a monumental gray shape that ended in two points, and then the gray shape shifted and they were moving forward. Frank loved moving forward—didn’t matter, wagon, buggy, cultivator. He threw his arms into the air, but Eloise was still holding him. Papa’s head stayed right there in front of him as the horse moved, but when he turned to look at her, he saw that Mama was smaller, her hands on her hips. All the animals stared—the sheep and the cows and the other horse. The rooster flew down from his perch, lifting his wings and making a squawk. “Good boy,” said Papa.
1922
AT THE SUPPER TABLE, Ragnar, Eloise, and Papa sat up straight, and Frank sat up straight, too. Ragnar, Eloise, and Papa never got up from the table during supper, and Frank stayed in his seat, too. Ragnar, Eloise, and Papa never wiggled in their chairs. Frank wiggled in his chair. Ragnar, Eloise, and Papa picked up their forks and knives and cut their sausage. Frank pressed the back of his spoon into his sweet potato, lifted it out, and pressed it in again. “Eat some, Frankie,” said Eloise, and Frank inserted the tip of his spoon into the orange mound and lifted it. A bit adhered to the spoon, and Frank brought it to his mouth. “Good boy,” said Papa.
“Ja, jeg elske søt poteter, når det er alt det er,” said Ragnar.
“Ragnar may not like the rabbit sausage,” said Papa, “but I do. Always have. One thing, Eloise, that you should remember is that a farmer doesn’t have to grow and sell everything he eats. There’s a whole world out there.”
“I like pheasant,” said Eloise.
“Me, too,” said Papa. “You go out into the cornfield after the harvest, and the pheasants are there pecking at the dropped kernels. When I was a boy, we got them with our slingshots, just for fun. And for supper.”
Frank put his finger on the bit of sausage and then picked it up and put it in his mouth. It was bitter, not like the sweet potatoes. He made a face, but then he picked up another bit.
“He’ll eat about anything,” said Papa. “That’s a good quality in a farmer. When I was in France, that was a place where they eat anything that moves or grows. I admired that.”
“Did you eat a snail?” said Eloise.
“Lucky to eat a snail,” said Papa. “Little fish with the heads on, fried up hard. Didn’t like that so much. Their animals eat about anything, too. Pumpkins. Turnips. Beer. Saw a man give his horse a beer.”
“Do they have beer in France?” said Eloise.
“Up north, where we were, they do,” said Papa.
“How long were you there?” said Eloise.
“Less than a year; wished I’d stayed longer and seen some different parts.”
Where was Mama? Frank’s thoughts returned to this. He thought maybe she was upstairs. Although Frank could climb the stairs and come back down without falling, Papa had blocked them off. He hadn’t seen Mama in a long time, though sometimes he heard her voice floating in the air.
Frank said, “Mama!”
“Can’t go to Mama yet,” said Papa. “But Granny’ll be down in a bit.”
“Mama,” said Frank.
Eloise, who was sitting closest to him, pointed with her fork to his sausage. She said, “It’s good for you. Make you big and strong.”
Frank gripped the spoon more tightly in his hand, raised his arm, and brought the spoon down on the mound of sweet potatoes. The mound jumped.
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br /> “No,” said Papa.
“No,” said Frank.
“Eat your food,” said Papa. “You’re old enough to eat what’s on there.”
Ragnar and Eloise looked at each other. Ragnar cleared his throat. “Jeg skjønner en tantrum komme.”
“Nonsense,” barked Papa. “Frankie, you be a big boy now, and eat your supper.”
Eloise looked up the stairs, and then back at Frank. She said, “Frankie, no …”
He knew what “no” meant—it was an irritating word, “no.” He placed his palms on the edge of the table, both of them, and he took a deep, deep breath, preliminary to a loud, loud noise. He could feel the noise rising from his chair, even from his feet, since his feet were kicking, and as the noise came out, he pushed as hard as he could against the edge of the table, and there he went—the chair arced backward, and he saw the ceiling and the corner of the dining room, and then the back of the chair hit, and Frank rolled out to the side, away from Eloise, and ran for the stairs. Papa’s big hand caught him by the collar of his overalls and then grabbed his shoulder, and spun him around. He didn’t know where he was, the room was going so fast, though he kept his eye on the stairs the best he could, and there was Granny Mary at the top, or just her feet, he couldn’t see the rest, and then there was the floor, and he was sprawled across Papa’s knee with his pants down, and every blow included a word: “Don’t. Run. Away. From. Me. Young. Man.”
Now Papa stood him on his feet and leaned close to his face, and there was that sharp smell again, and the heat and the redness, and the loudness, and Frank closed his eyes and screamed until Papa’s hand knocked him down and he was quiet. Everyone was quiet. Frank lay on his back, and he could just see Eloise with her mouth open at the table, and Ragnar next to her. Granny’s footsteps came closer and closer, and she sat him up. She said, “I don’t know what gets into two-year-olds. It’s like your own child has been taken away and this other being left in his place.”
